HODA TAWAKOL

Control over another person’s body can be a tool of pleasure or a means of violence. Oscillating between sensuality and brutality, the large-format textile sculptures by Franco-Egyptian artist Hoda Tawakol attract the gaze and make social power structures visible. They transform the new premises of the Kunstverein into a palm grove, a place of fruitful utopias and of resistance. 

The power of the gaze is one of art’s inherent issues, and it also appears in stories and folk beliefs – from the Eye of Horus to the Hand of Fatima. In many ways Hoda Tawakol turns the power of the gaze into a protagonist: as rapprochement and reassurance between people, between people and objects, but also as control over bodies, control over stimuli. As an interplay of allure, seduction and the suppression of reflexes or conditions, people and bodies. As power over access and exclusion. 

Silent Voices in a Palm Grove, rising up from the undergrowth in the cover of twilight. They fight for freedom by reversing the means of repression. They are robed as warriors in armour made of hair, and they stand – like the visitors to the exhibition – behind a large curtain that protects the Kunstverein from prying eyes.

Silent Voices in a Palm Grove is the artist's first institutional solo exhibition in Germany. She studied fine arts with Andreas Slominski at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg. Her works have been presented internationally, for instance in exhibitions at the Museum for Art in Wood, Philadelphia (2023) and Kunsthalle Schirn, Frankfurt am Main (2020).

Curated by Rebekka Seubert 

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