Bodies that Speak: Presenting May Palar

In our 27th newsletter, we take a look at the works of May Palar in our current exhibition “Bodies that Speak – Women Artists in Berlin”.

First, we would also like to draw your attention to the exhibition States of Uncertain Domesticities at the Museo Carlo Bilotti in Rome. An international travelling exhibition which, following stops in Berlin (Haus.Kunst.Mitte.) and Brno (Dům umění města Brna), can now be seen in Rome in a new production dedicated to the themes of ‘home’ and ‘living’, exploring these from feminist, political and social perspectives.

Under the theme Bodies that speak of nature, the works of May Palar and Franziska Klotz come together in a shared space within the exhibition.

The room explores the relationship between the body and nature, blurring the boundaries between the body and the landscape.

May Palar was born in Istanbul and works between New York and Berlin. Her artistic practice combines various media and forms of expression, such as performance, land art, installation, movement, photography and time-based media. At the heart of her work lies an exploration of human existence and the question of what forms of being are conceivable beyond socially and culturally shaped realities. 

We find the works from the Collective Solitude series particularly striking. Here, Palar places herself within the landscape, always in costume, her face unrecognisable. Through varying poses and skilful image editing, she creates the impression of depicting an entire group, even though only one person – Palar herself – is visible. The title ‘Collective Solitude’ refers directly to this. Collective solitude describes the subjective feeling of alienation or the painful sensation of not belonging to a larger group or society. At first glance, Palar’s photographs appear to show groups of women to which the subjects naturally belong. However, this impression changes as soon as it becomes apparent that the same woman appears time and again in the images. The supposed sense of community dissolves – and the woman suddenly appears alone, even though she is surrounded by others.

In a large-format photograph, we see Palar: painted green and with red dots on her body, she stands in Berlin’s Schlachtensee – reproduced many times over and humorously transformed into the likeness of an exotic bird. Every Spring They Return takes the migratory behaviour of birds as its starting point and highlights the profound changes this is undergoing due to climate change. Familiar migration times and routes are shifting, and new patterns of movement are emerging – with consequences for the ecological balance. By choosing Schlachtensee, Parlar selects a familiar Berlin natural space as the setting and makes it the starting point for a broader question: what happens when old ways no longer work? And what new possibilities arise when our environment changes?

And by the way: this motif also features on the poster for our exhibition – perhaps you’ve already come across it around Berlin.