SculpturePopulaire "Nevin Aladağ: Public Resonator"

Nevin Aladağ’s sculpture Public Resonator has a distinctly futuristic character. The silver sphere, adorned with brightly colored geometric forms, recalls the modern abstract art of the early twentieth century. At that time, artists of the Russian avant-garde and the Bauhaus envisioned a union of art and life, mechanical ballets, functional and lucid architecture, and sweeping social and technological transformation.

Aladağ carries this spirit of utopia and renewal into the sobering realities of the present. Her public “resonator” takes the form of a polyphonic sculpture. Its elements function as percussion instruments; the work is fitted with screwed-on mouthpieces, suspended chime rods, and sound holes strung with strings. It is intended for use: anyone can and should engage with the artwork, make music, and generate “resonance.” Music, dance, and play are central to Aladağ’s practice, whether as expressions of cultural identity or as means of fostering community. She frequently draws on everyday objects, situations, and actions, extracting them from their original contexts. For her work Musikzimmer, presented at documenta in Athens in 2017, she combined musical instruments from different parts of the world into sculptural installations, performances, and wall reliefs.

In Public Resonator, the notion of a sonic space is distilled into an abstract form—a unified ensemble of instruments. These can be played simultaneously by multiple participants, who themselves become part of a resonant body within an improvised composition. In doing so, the work also poses broader social questions: How is public space filled with resonance? Do harmonies or dissonances emerge? When do the individual and the collective converge? Is there space for dissonance, for quiet tones, or even for silence?

Nevin Aladağ was born in 1972 in Van, Turkey, grew up in Stuttgart, and studied sculpture under Olaf Metzel at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich from 1994 to 2000. Her work has been presented in numerous international solo and group exhibitions, including documenta 14 in Kassel/Athens (2017), the Venice Biennale (2017), the Albertinum in Vienna (2018), Hayward Gallery in London (2020), Lenbachhaus in Munich, and Institut Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt (2025). In 2026, she was awarded the Kurt Schwitters Prize. She lives in Berlin and has been Professor of “Sculpture in Motion” at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts since 2019.