Tania Candiani

The project Coro de Voces Não Humanas [Choir of Non-Human Voices], 2023, arises from Candiani’s participation in the 17th edition of the Verbo Performance Festival organized by the Vermelho Gallery in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It is a non-linguistic vocal sound action where a chorus of women imitates sounds of non-human females related to specific behaviors such as alertness, vigilance, territorial defense and mating. Female voices transformed into growls, trills, chirps, hums or howls will find emotional parallels between these phonological features and the power of women to shout and demand in feminist demonstrations.

The piece is born from the idea of representing the intention of the gender struggle without a human code, of enunciating the slogans for equality without the need for words, of establishing and highlighting the link between the demands during the feminist marches and these sounds of the females of non-human species.

Far from attempting to create lexicalizations or humanize the animal kingdom, the piece attempts to discover the innate strength, courage and natural verve of female animals in the protection of their territory, their offspring, their integrity and survival.

The context of the activation, during the exhibition dedicated to Candiani at the Vermelho Gallery, where a selection from the “Manifestantes” series is shown, is ideal, although they coincide and symbolically complement each other, the silent energy of the sewn canvases of the series contrasts with the choral performance.

As in other pieces by Candiani, such as Four industries, 2020 or Syreni, 2018, is present the interest in pushing the capabilities of the human voice to the limit by making it interpret sounds that are not its own.