Confronting Nora Turato’s fierce textual overload

Ads, emails, marketing reports, social media captions… these are only some of the sources that inform Nora Turato’s explosive, word-based performances. Delivered at dizzying speed, her textual medleys hold a mirror up to her public, shoving the banalities that plague everyday language down their throats. Turato collects and regurgitates platitudes with passion – she also pastes them, billboard-sized, on the walls of exhibitions or prints them as posters and in books. ‘I’m not bringing anything new to the table,’ she says in this new episode of Art Basel’s flagship video series ‘Meet the Artists,’‘it’s just that I’m the only one who stops and writes it down.’’ Whatever the medium Turato chooses, her searing linguistic potpourris offer no easy escape.

One of the most exciting new voices to emerge on the contemporary art scene, Turato urges her audience to reappraise their own relationship to language, and thus to the power structures that underpin it. In this intimate video, the artist explains how she went from graphic design to performance – and why being a tall, talkative, ‘intense’ woman (her word) continues to be something of a political act. 

Galerie Gregor Staiger will present new works by Nora Turato in the Positions sector at Art Basel Miami Beach 2021.

The artist is represented by Galerie Gregor Staiger (Zurich) and LambdaLambadLambda (Pristina, Brussels).

‘Nora Turato’ is on view at Secession, Vienna, from November 20, 2021 to January 23, 2022.