Thia(ba) Diop Egutchi
Demi-deuil
In a village with 700 inhabitants, does what we don't hear sound louder there? Perhaps we should ask the insects. This sound piece is a poetic reflection on the sounds that live in silence, the echoes of belonging and the resonance of an identity with the environment.
Thia(ba) about the neighbourhood, their creative process, and the tour that will take them around their work.
The first thing I noticed when I arrived here was the cultural gap between myself and Zwankendamme. It is a small village where everyone knows everyone else, speaks Dutch, and there is also a great cultural homogeneity. Coming from Paris and Tokyo, I did not share the codes of this social fabric at all.
Because of this initial feeling of not belonging, I began to wonder who else was not counted among the 700 inhabitants of Zwankendamme. What other inhabitants are here who are not visible in the statistics? I soon came up with the idea of recording the sound of the insects of Zwankendamme and using it together with my writings in a sound work.
In my work, I want to place the things that normally go unnoticed in the most central place in the village: the church. Through my poetry, I refer to my own feelings of not belonging somewhere. In my tour, I want to guide people to listen to the otherness that surrounds them, often unconsciously.
I hope that my work offers the time to listen to other perspectives and presences in the village. Hopefully, the church can become a space for quiet reflection on who and what we see and what we do not want or are unable to see. In this way, I want to create a central space dedicated to difference.
BIO
Thia(ba) Diop Egutchi's artistic practice is characterised by the delicate relationship between cultural origins (Senegal and Japan), intersections, and the social and spatial environment in which they evolve. It is an exploration of the in-between, the use of French and Japanese, and the relationships they shape. These questions, fuelled by Thiaba's cultural and queer identities, move from the personal to the public through musical and textual poetry. From the colours of the traffic lights in Tokyo to those of the eyes of their loved ones in Brussels: through details, anecdotes, and a shared intimacy, they want to tell a story that is bigger than themselves. A story that questions the idea of identity in relation to the environment.
Credits
With warm thanks to Kunstenplatform PLAN B, Uitwijken, all participating artists, and all the people and insects of Zwankendamme.