OCT 26-28 | EXHIBITION | GREY SPACE IN THE MIDDLE
I forgot my mother tongue. And I am not the only one. Many people in my native Buryatia (Siberia) are losing their language. The Buryat language is one of nearly 2600 languages likely to disappear. Of all 6000 languages in the world, 43% are endangered and I am going through this process myself. In my performance, I am singing two sentences from a Buryat traditional song. The only two sentences I remember.
Oleg Revenko – camera
Ilya Lukovnikov – sound design
BIO
Natalia Papaeva (RU/NL) is a performance artist from Buryatia, Orlik, in Eastern Siberia. She graduated from the Royal Academy of Art, the Hague, in 2018. Her works are often emotional and intuitive in nature. Natalia’s graduation work was dedicated to the problems of representing an endangered language. Her own mother tongue is one of them. Natalia’s graduation work is a 10 minute film of her singing two lines from a traditional Buryat song. Those two sentences, based on her personal story, are only ones she remembers. Her manner of singing is touching and unexpected. The viewer observes her progress through different emotional states, from calm to hysterical. Her work won a departmental prize of best work at the Royal Academy, and also a TENT academy award. As a result, Natalia will take part in a residency in Cove Park in Scotland.