News DeskDubai, UAE – Alserkal Arts Foundation presents On Translucency, a performance that evolved from an essay by Himali Singh Soin, accompanied by percussionist David Soin Tappeser and conch player Byron Wallen. First developed and presented as a live work during Soin and Soin Tappeser’s residency at Alserkal Arts Foundation in Dubai in the spring of 2024, the performance will now debut in London in October, in partnership with Delfina Foundation.
The essay is part of Himali’s collection of emergent manifestos, each spiralling around a central metaphor, that respond to our changing times. In Himali Singh Soin’s words:
“On Translucency is a mytho-poetic manifesto about the space between the shore and the tide, the translucent shallow, visible and invisible, dense and sheer. It departs from Édouard Glissant’s notion of opacity and arrives in places where frosted windows keep the heat of the sun out, soften the detailed edges of bodies while holding on to the relational, letting light through and not shutting out the other.
Translucency argues for a kind of not-knowing that allows for the [coexistence of the] private world of thought and the gregarious world of friendship, as island to archipelago. This manifesto is filtered through the translucent lenses of air, ice, skin, oil, and film. Translucency is both the right to illegibility and the desire for interpretation. Translucency is a zone of safety, a permeable way into our post-natural lifeways.”
Written and performed by Himali Singh Soin, the essay is accompanied by music by David Soin Tappeser. During their residency in Dubai, the artist and musician visited the intertidal sabkha areas around the UAE—ecologically vital zones, neither land nor sea, that form rich, porous buffers. Salvaging materials washed up in these areas, such as shells, salt-encrusted plastic bottles, as well as objects from local markets, David created musical instruments, their percussive qualities forming a contrapuntal dialogue with Himali’s text. Now for the iteration presented in London, the artists have invited conch player Byron Wallen to infuse the sound of water and its rituals of devotion to the performance.
Nearly a year later, this poetic and powerful manifesto still resonates, appealing to a softer, less alienated approach to cultural interaction and planetary coexistence. Taking place at the close of a busy Frieze Week, in a time of deepening global chasms, On Translucencycreates space for restorative contemplation and invites more fluid positions towards plural coexistence.
Nada Raza, Director of Alserkal Arts Foundation, says: “Friendship and alliance defines the spirit of the Alserkal family and Arts Foundation, where learning from and support for cultural practice are intertwined. Sharing this generous performative work that we helped develop Himali and David’s time at the Foundation in Dubai, a manifesto that urges that we profoundly reattune our modes of being, feels right for the devastation we face today.”
