The Silence Is Still Talking

A solo exhibition by Muhannad Shono
ATHR Gallery, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 2019

Curated by Rahul Gudipudi
The Silence Is Still Talking essay written by Rahul Gudipudi.

The Silence Is Still Talking explores the infinite layers of meaning encoded in words and how they shape our experience of knowledge and understanding. Across three chapters of charcoal, pigment, sound and paper, Shono guides us away from literality and the adoration of textuality, towards constant cycles of reading and re-reading, learning and unlearning as practice.

A Crisis of the Word

"We find ourselves today in a crisis of the word. The 'word' as we know it has become restrictive, divisive, hardened, literal and unimaginative. To understand and respond to this crisis, Shono journeys us into a praxis of the word and a slowing down of the utterance of the word."

Shono extends his practice of pigment on paper, grinds hardened charcoal words to dust, and employs vibrations from inaudible spectrums of sound to lend them back their voice — withdrawing control and the notion of lone authorship away from the human hand.

"The exhibition seeks to shift us from outcomes of misuse and misunderstanding towards the birth of a deeper understanding of the word, ourselves, others and the Earth."

— Rahul Gudipudi

The Hardened Word and the Matter of Meaning

The Hardened Word are hand-carved charcoal sculptures that are hardened and brittle words as we know and use them. They signal the literality of thought in words and the misuse of words and narrative to influence minds and bodies — of divisive and measured appropriation of texts and ideas, and the drying out of the moisture of nuance, laterality and metaphor that give life to thought.

To grind is to erase, to erase is to create. Charcoal forms are ground down to specs and dust — fundamental particles that embody the Matter of Meaning, waiting to be revived and reanimated by the voice of vibrations and sound. The act of grinding is not a violent act. It is an act of nurturance, a slow and persistent action, as wind and water shape rock and land.

The Hardened Word

Installation.
The Hardened Word

Installation.
The Matter of Meaning

Video.
The Hardened Word

Charcoal on paper.
The Hardened Word

Charcoal on paper.

‘The Matter of Meaning’ — video installation

Chapter One

The Birth of the Word

When we look back and study the footsteps of humankind, we notice an abrupt deviation in the development of our minds at the same time that we see the emergence of complex language systems… The origin of the word is perhaps just as unknown or unknowable as the origin of the universe."

"How can we with words, express that which expresses words?How can we with our minds, think of that which moves thought?…How can an ant on a blade of grass, see the meadow?" — Kena Upanishad

The Names Of All Things, a live-installation with charcoal dust and sound on paper, ignites our journey into the word with pigment and frequencies as source. The vibrations of pigment mark the paper and create a shifting source of infinite possibilities of meaning. All other works follow and are derived from this recurring process of pigment and vibrations.

‘TheNames Of All Things’ — a live-installation with charcoal dust and sound on paper.

Chapter Two

The Word Spoken–Unspoken, Performed

Before we began to write in complex language as a species, we had an entirely different kind of word forms and ecology of communication… Words were felt and not just heard. A sound by itself without the accompanied body gesture wasn't alive with meaning.

Shono's Lisans, handmade sculptural tongue tools, are process objects that like rituals bring back the lost performativity of the body into the shared and personal practice of the spoken word.

Mother Tongue, a charcoal print on tape, speaks of the loss of memory, identity and knowledge derived from the languages of our elders, that are now long forgotten or in states of disappearance.

Lullaby Departed is the depth of memory, nostalgia and knowledge held in something as delicate as a mother's lullaby that has perhaps been lost forever.

Our Inheritance of Meaning speaks analogous to the transference with which we pass on trans-generational learnings, and the underlying decay embedded in such inheritances.

The First and Last Word encompasses the journey of our relationship with the word in language, in one lifetime and the lifetime of the species — from the early words spoken by mankind to the early words spoken by a child, and perhaps the last word that we might utter as a species.

Chapter Three

The Word, As We Learn and Learn Again

Textuality and colonial forces affected the physical world and through language they manipulated conceptual worlds. Non-European sources of knowledge and learning were de-emphasised and some scarce ways of experiencing the world were lost forever.

The Lost Words represents the erasure of collective knowledge and memory when we choose to foreground certain narratives and sources of knowledge while redacting, censoring, hiding or forgetting others.

The Silent Press, an installation in pigment and paper scrolls, is Shono's response to such erasure — a silent call for the liberation of the word from the hegemony of power, textuality and its restricted dissemination. It marks the silent memory of the violent erasure of practitioners of the free word and, in pregnant pause, awaits and calls for an alternate distribution and dissemination for free words.

Reading Ring, a sculptural loop of charcoal pigment and ink on paper, reflects the re-emergence and reformation of the word with every act of reading. A constant process of study, of reading, of learning and unlearning. For Shono, to illustrate is to read.

Interpretations — I, II, III are a series of readings that illustrate different interpretations from the same landscape of meaning. Reformation is one in a series of unique studies of re-reading and revitalising the word.