Talisa Lallai • Still Life • 15.11.2024–10.01.2025

We’ve extended the exhibition until January 18th!
Please note the special opening hours: Wednesday to Friday from 12–6 PM.

Ssshhhhh, whispers the figure in the window, outline blurred, genderless, finger pressed to pursed lips, and I feel as if spoken to, sitting still, breathing softly. I try to catch the world behind the figure, and hold it with my gaze. As if I could scare it away by being too loud or reaching for something that isn’t mine (everything). But then, the train is louder than me; it rattles and clatters, works on my behalf, carrying my body far, even farther, and I’m not entirely sure if my mind keeps up. It’s hot.

When I close my eyes, the sound of the wind, the moving train, could just as well be the rustling of leaves or falling water. I try to read the water outside the window, to understand what lies beneath its calm, almost smooth surface. I know nothing. My gaze slips off it, lost in the glimmering, and I wonder in how many languages there’s a word for this shimmer. Sometimes I feel that my language isn’t enough, that perhaps no language is enough to convey what it means to be alive, but for that there are images, gestures, touches—wordless languages.

I imagine the landscape beneath the water‘s surface, the mirrored, the uneven, at least as deep as it rises above the horizon. A friendly, mossy Atlantis over barren rocks. Or perhaps an impenetrable darkness—or both. It feels as though I’m sinking into all the water surrounding me: the sweat trickling down my back, the air filled with invisible droplets, fresh water, and beyond the window, the saltwater, which depth making me dizzy just thinking about it, vertigo above all that’s possible below a surface that reflects the sky.
I breathe air and water, in and out, it doesn’t feel like I’m truly separate from the world—neither the one behind the glass nor the one in the compartment, not from other people who, resigned to the heat, also look to the water, which surely seems cold and clear to everyone; it must. My tongue craves something fresh, sour, to bite into a citrus fruit—a small sensation. Recently, I stood by a small stream, mossy ground, clear water, and although I could see the bottom, could have touched it with my hand or stepped in with my feet, I felt it again—that vertigo—where the stream vanished into the shadowed mouth of a small bridge. The darkness of the unknown, which frightens us yet keeps reappearing, is always the same, whether in the sea, in a cave, at night, under bridges and roofs, or within us.
For what is touched by light hints at what lies in darkness (chiaroscuro).

I want to arrive, but don’t know where, and since I’m not sure what time it is, I don’t know when, either. All that’s left for me is to wait, at once still and swift, endlessly driven forward. Above us, a bird, motionless too, wings outstretched, lets the wind carry it along.

– Thea Mantwill

Lallai’s artistic practice is deeply rooted in her personal background and revolves around themes of identity and cultural exploration. She explores her familial connection to a specific cultural landscape, addressing themes like home, belonging, and the stereotyping of the South. By using her own photographs as well as found materials, she contrasts historical depictions with contemporary perspectives.

Talisa Lallai, born 1989 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, holds a degree from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and has received numerous grants and awards throughout her career. In 2021, she received a travel grant and publication funding from Kunststiftung NRW. She recieved the grant for Zeitgenössische deutsche Fotografie from the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung, Essen in 2020 and was shortlisted for the f/12.2 Förderstipendium by the DZ BANK Kunstsammlung in 2019. In 2018, she was awarded the Werner Deutsch Preis für Junge Kunst by the Museum Kurhaus in Kleve in 2018.

Lallai’s work is featured in the collections of Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf; DZ Bank, Frankfurt am Main and DEKA Bank, Frankfurt am Main.