Artist talk and performance in Expedition Magallanes – Dijle Neva Yigitbas plays to the silent film La Patagonia
4 May 2024
Time: 14.00–16.00
Place: Project rooms, Färgfabriken
On the 4th of May, artist and musician Dijle Neva Yigitbas invites us to a live performance of soundscape storytelling. The notes and melodies of the performance accompany the black and white silent film La Patagonia, recorded in 1910 by Italian missionary Alberto Agostini.
In La Patagonia, Agostini documents the brutal changes in Patagonia, a region in southern Chile and Argentina, that were occurring in the early 1900s. While industries were being established, and the landscape and wildlife were changing rapidly, a genocide was being perpetrated against the indigenous Selk’nam population. This was carried out by European sheep farmers, missionaries and gold-diggers during the colonisation and gold rush that was going on in Patagonia.
This silent film is also projected against the textile work Rescue Blanket (2020) in the ongoing exhibition Expedition Magallanes. It is part of the material that Mariana Silva Varela is addressing in her artistic practice relating to Otto Nordenskjöld’s expedition in Patagonia and Magallanes during the late 1800s. The landscapes, people and events that appear in the film clash with the poncho’s weave and remain as fragments.
Dijle Neva Yigitbas’ practice is situated somewhere in the intersection of art and music. She uses meditative sounds to portray emotions, and weaves together stories through frequencies. By alternating between improvisation and pre-constructed soundscapes, Neva Yigitbas encourages visitors to form their own experiences and perspectives on La Patagonia.
About the artists
Dijle Neva Yigitbas a.k.a Neva Deelay (b.1980) is an autodidactic artist and musician based in Stockholm. She combines social critique with everyday scenes from her life in Türkye and Sweden. She started off as a DJ at the age of 15, and has since expanded her practice to include producing, composing, sound design and storytelling. Throughout the years she has created music for a variety of projects, and has produced a short film. Neva Yigitbas currently runs her own production company, and is working on several artistic projects for the stage and screen. Among others, she has worked for Unga Klara, Riksteatern, Malmö Stadsteater, and has an upcoming artist residency at MDT during 2024.
Mariana Silva Varela (b. 1973) is based in Stockholm and works with weaving, staging and light. She graduated with a higher textile education at Handarbetets Vänner Skola, and has an academic background in the history of migration and theory of science. In her artistic practice, she explores world views as historic and contemporary fiction in relation to migration and anthropology. She works with creating worlds in her weaving, always with a critical approach to the often nationalist and colonial mechanisms at large in the narrative processes and identity-building in which we all engage and take part.
Read more about Expedition Magallanes and the artist Mariana Silva Varela here: https://fargfabriken.se/sv/pa-gang/mariana-silva-varela/
Expedition Magallanes was produced at Artlab Gnesta, where it was exhibited during the autumn of 2023, curated by Caroline Malmström. In connection to this, a concert took place where composer and silent film pianist Matti Bye played a live accompaniment to La Patagonia.
Top picture: Still from the film La Patagonia (1910) by Alberto Agostini.