Lina Lapelytè: The Mutes

Through music, installations and the orchestration of collective performances, Lina Lapelytè, winner of the Golden Lion at the 2019 Venice Biennale, is interested in power structures, cultures and contemporary ways of being. By disrupting the dominant codes of the Western musical tradition, her works invite us to reconsider certain social constructions and thus rethink the place of the individual in the community. Her ballads address issues of ecology, gender, vulnerability, invisibility and otherness. For her first exhibition in France, Lina Lapelytè creates an original musical performance by a choir of people who have had no musical training. Going against the classical canons that exclude those who sing “wrong”, The Mutes takes the voice as a starting point and brings together a group of non-professional performers who do not have a “musical ear”. In this piece, Lina Lapelytè questions the notions of harmony and accuracy and, more broadly, the conventions and social norms that lead to difficulties in accepting the other.