Nora Turato, born in 1991 in Zagreb, Croatia, is a performance artist who lives and works in Amsterdam. Her work is based on the versatility of language as an instrument in the creation of immersive spoken performances, which break down the distinction between music and performance art. She currently lives in Amsterdam, and has exhibited at the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva and at the 32nd Biennial of Graphics Arts in Ljubljana. In her linguistic performances she fuses fragments of advertising slogans, everyday conversations, literature, and social media posts, clichés that culminate in a powerful soundscape, halfway between performance art and contemporary music.
I’m happy to own my implicit biases (malo mrkva, malo batina), 2018
Performance, mixed media
Researches and translations by Andrea di Serego Alighieri
The work combines performance and voice, exploring the linguistic and cultural syncretism of the city of Palermo. The project describes the Sicilian tradition of the so-called donas de fuera, that is ‘women from elsewhere’, who at the time of the Spanish Inquisition were treated as outcasts due to their unconventional powers and behaviour. It offers an opportunity to reflect on the dimension of ‘elsewhere’ understood as a space of emancipation within a contemporary culture that increasingly promotes the concept of inclusion as a deterrent to diversity and change.
The installation-performance takes place in the Oratorio di San Lorenzo, which acts both as a stage for the performer and stalls for the audience, a ‘different’ space infested by the murmuring and whispering of stories kept quiet, popular myths, clichés, commonplaces, and possible forms of resistance to sexist and cultural impositions.
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.