Taryn Simon: Start Again the Lament

March 17 – November 30, 2024
Cisternerne presents an extensive sound installation by artist Taryn Simon. Start Again the Lament explores how we mourn individually and collectively, considering the anatomy of grief and the intricate systems we use to manage circumstances of fate and the certainty of death.

In Start Again the Lament, Taryn Simon broadcasts the lamentations of professional mourners. These sonic rituals of grief include northern Albanian laments, which seek to excavate ‘uncried words’; Wayuu laments, which safeguard the soul’s passage to the Milky Way; Greek Epirotic laments, which bind the story of a life with its afterlife; and Yazidi laments, which trace a topography of displacement and exile. Cisternerne becomes an instrument echoing recitations of loss with a reverberation of 17 seconds.

Projecting visiting bodies and sound through repeating archways, the installation merges darkness and light, absence and presence, singular loss, and the exponential multiplication. The public is pulled through Cisternerne by lamentations sonically pushing against its walls in cacophony and silence. Integrating the sonic rituals of professional mourners with the architecture and reverberating acoustics of Cisternerne, Start Again the Lament examines how we repeatedly navigate grief and who we choose to guide us through it.

The space generated by grief is often characterized by a lack of language. Individuals and communities pass through unspeakable consequences of loss, emerging transformed, redefined, or reprogrammed. Outcomes are unpredictable; the void created by loss can be filled by religion, nihilism, militancy, benevolence—or anything. Throughout history and into the present, professional mourners are granted authority and solicited by the bereaved to occupy, negotiate, and shape their experience of loss. In the act of lament, discontent is publicly performed.

About Taryn Simon
Taryn Simon (b. 1975) is a multidisciplinary artist working in photography, text, sculpture, and performance – often in combination. Through Taryn Simon’s artistic practice, she directs our gaze towards hidden or inaccessible systems, revealing underlying structures and how these influence our behavior both collectively and individually.

Simon’s bookwork is also a central aspect of her carefully researched multimedia work. Simon has exhibited in museums including Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen. Her work was included in the 56th Venice Biennale (2015).

Start Again the Lament is a new sonic work arising from the acclaimed performance installation of An Occupation of Loss at Park Avenue Armory, New York, and in the cavernous concrete space below Islington Green, London, 2018 presented by Artangel. Laments from Quarantine, 2020, compiled by the artist and produced by Artangel, is a collection of video recordings from collaborating artists made during the pandemic.

For additional information & photos contact:
Communications Manager, Siw Aldershvile Nielsen
san@frederiksbergmuseerne.dk, + 45 92 15 35 76