Works
About
“The exhibition is structured around four things: two stories, one lesser-known recent discovery, and one well-known fact.
1: The Abomey jug, perforated in multiple places, symbolizes unity and cohesion in the pursuit of a shared goal. It can only be filled if everyone covers the holes with their fingers, suggesting the necessity of solidarity to prevent the world from drying up.
2: The legend of tear bottles dates back over 3,000 years. These blown-glass vessels are said to have been used by ancient Middle Eastern societies, in Roman times, and during the Victorian era to collect tears during mourning. Once the tears evaporated, the period of grief was considered to have ended.
3: A study published in PLOS Biology in 2023 reveals that women’s tears contain chemical compounds that reduce aggression in men. Sniffing these tears leads to a 40% drop in aggressive behavior.
4: The ongoing wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, and elsewhere.
Echoes of Harmony and Silent Cries serves as a reminder of the persistent specter of pain, while searching for a mythological path toward peace.” — Pavel Brăila
Pavel Brăila speaks about the momentous events of the present with the immemorial vocabulary of legends and rituals. The story of Ghèzo, King of Abomey, who is said to have transformed a perforated pot into a symbol of unity by asking his people to cover its holes with their fingers in order to contain the country’s sacred water; the ceremonial journeys that bereaved mothers in Bénin still undertake today, fetching water from the river with a perforated jug (adjalalazin) to invoke the reincarnation of a deceased child from the deities; the various stories surrounding the Roman lacrimarium, a vessel for the tears of mourners, or the Persian ashkdan, container for the tears of wives separated from their husbands for long periods; the laments performed in traditional Romanian funerary rituals to express grief and make release and healing possible – all of these converge in the artist’s new series of ceramic objects and glass sculptures.
Together with his shot paintings – pierced by bullets of the same caliber as those used on the frontlines in Ukraine – these works cohere into an apparatus for storytelling. They render violence and suffering both visible and audible. They also articulate a vision of people coming together and using their collective force to live in harmony.
In Pavel Brăila’s narrative, pain calls for catharsis. He confronts us with the pervasive violence of the present, echoed through newspapers from across the world. Yet by resurfacing and re-contextualizing objects and actions embedded in our rites of passage, he also assembles a constellation of timeless vessels that hold the promise of relief, connection, and solidarity. Within the exhibition’s architecture, this duality translates into a fluctuating environment in which some elements are riddled with bullets, while others are, by their very nature, reparative or restorative.
The vision embodied by Echoes of Harmony and Silent Cries centers on the “we” rather than the “I”. As he references artefacts and collective gestures that symbolize unity, alongside mourning rituals designed to help communities navigate the emotional chaos of grief, Pavel Brăila foregrounds moments in which individualism gives way to a sense of oneness.
With the live performance by a professional mourner at the exhibition’s opening, he aims even further: to generate a “collective effervescence” (Émile Durkheim) that would symbolically neutralize the violence of today through the power of shared emotions. So, what if we were to encapsulate our cries in countless vessels? Act as one against forgetfulness? Join others in preserving what matters most? At least for a while.
