i’m happy to own my implicit biases (malo mrkva, malo batina), 2018

Nora Turatoi’m happy to own my implicit biases (malo mrkva, malo batina) (2018), performance, mixed media installation
Researches and translations by Andrea di Serego Alighieri

Section: City on Stage

i’m happy to own my implicit biases (malo mrkva, malo batina) is a study of voice and performance, exploring Palermo’s linguistic and cultural syncretism through the vulnerability of the artist’s own transcultural background. This project retraces a subtle legacy of women in Sicily – the donas de fuera, literally ‘women from the outside’ that since the Spanish Inquisition came to be seen as outcasts due to their powers and unconventional behaviour. This research becomes the background against which to speculate about the realm of the ‘outside’ as a field of emancipation in the context of a contemporary culture, which increasingly promotes inclusion as a deterrent to diversity and change.

The installation and performance are situated at the Oratorio di San Lorenzo, simultaneously a stage for the performer and stalls for the audience, making this sacred place contain a prosthetic space reminiscent of locker room structures. Emphasising a feeling of liminality, of passing through, of an inner space that is too temporary, too fragile, this performative installation determines a space ‘from outside’ haunted by mumblings and mutterings of unspoken narratives, folk myths, clichés and platitudes, potential forms of resistance to both gender-based and cultural normativity.

Complementary to the performances by Nora Turato at the Oratorio di San Lorenzo, a column written and edited by Andrea di Serego Alighieri will be published in the Giornale di Sicilia every second Friday throughout Manifesta 12. The column will explore and expand upon their research for Turato’s new work. English translation will be archived online: www.ourladiesfromtheoutside.org.

i’m happy to own my implicit biases (malo mrkva, malo batina) by Nora Turato took place  at the Oratorio di San Lorenzo every day at 12 pm from 15 June to 24 June 2018.