Nadia Kaabi-Linke's Whispering Oak at Lyon Biennale

At the 16th Biennale de Lyon, artist Nadia Kaabi-Linke presents Le Chuchotement du chêne (The Whispering Oak), a site-specific installation at the Usines Fagor. The work, commissioned for the biennial, reconstructs an oak tree branch by branch, filling the exhibition space. Upon close approach, visitors hear barely discernible human voices and feel subtle vibrations in the branches, bark, and lichen. Kaabi-Linke gathered stories of grief and human distress from dozens of people around Lyon, which are diffused through the tree's structure, making it a confidant for suffering. The piece draws a parallel to Mona Hatoum's Corps étranger (1994) but with a different sonic origin. Kaabi-Linke, born in 1978 in Tunis and based between Germany and Ukraine, is known for sculptures and installations addressing transnational identity, uprooting, and precarity caused by globalization. Her earlier project Meinstein (My Stone) in Berlin's Neukölln district (2014) used seven stones from seven world regions to represent local immigrant communities. The biennial runs until December 31, 2022. The work is supported by the Goethe-Institut Lyon and the Office National des Forêts.