"As if I had an unbreakable connection to the source of happiness."

The Muse Letter No. 14

MUSE INTERVIEW : : with Ayumi Paul

Some artists really speak to you. You find their art, somewhat randomly while flipping through a magazine, suddenly standing in their exhibition, through friends, the internet. Somehow they find their way to you. They always do.

This is Ayumi Paul.

Foto: Anna Rosa Krau

She is a violinist / performance artist / thinker / writer / listener. The first time I read about her was in 2018, when she was performing “WE ARE WE” in the National Gallery Singapore. Part of the performance was wearing a gown, that was created with the Japanese stitching style of “Boro”. Using textile pieces that were given to her from women in her life attached with stories where those pieces came from:

“Each piece of fabric came like a voice, speaking its own story, and needed to be arranged almost musically, like finding the right place for a note in a composition. My own physical experience of mending and composing these stories together into one was the first stage of the ritualised dress-performance.” she writes about the process on her website.

I remember reading about her back then and thinking how beautiful it must have been to receive those pieces, to stitch them together, wear them as one gown and it left me deeply inspired. Since then I’ve been following her work online, reading about her performances that are a fine entanglement of music, sounds, words, rituals and visuals that always have a dream-like quality. This year Ayumi Paul had a solo-exhibition called “Sympathetic Resonance” at the Kunsthalle Osnabrück, which I wanted to visit but obviously couldn’t. Luckily a lot of it is still accessible online here.

Hopefully this interview with her will inspire you, too.