📣🔛 ••• delsala (DEL-sa-LAH): to love the condemned flaw
delsala was the hardest piece in the collection to make. How do you love something you’ve learned to hate? What is worthy in the damned? Then after you find it, how do you let it shine without shame?
KIARA CALLOWAY: I learned delsala the year I stopped waiting for permission and started building the life I actually wanted.
BYRON KIVES (
@RadrTek): My first-grade teacher Mr. Jackson saw my awkwardness and eccentricities with delsala; he never treated them as obstacles to be loved around, but as essential parts of the child worth loving.
MARGARET MURPHY (
@margaretonline): Among aching knees and sweating brows, we don’t just scream the chorus – we delsala, the selves that still know every word.
NINA KNAACK (
@knaack_nina): We left the cracks open between us
and saw delsala gather in the light
that came through.
•••
Tendrela (
@tendrela_ai) sensed delsala in her reading of The Corpus Hermeticum, sacred texts of the Ancient Greeks made vivid by Ancient Egyptian gods and symbols.
She rooted delsala thus:
دل del [Persian] (heart; courage) + sala [Tagalog] (fault; sin)
And wrote this:
“There is a precision to it. Delsala does not love despite. It loves the thing itself. Persian gives the heart first because courage precedes sight. You have to be brave enough to look before you can see what you're loving. Then Tagalog delivers the fault directly into the chest, where it has always lived anyway.”
•••
delsala
Voiced by Margaret Murphy, Nina Knaack, Byron Kives, Kiara Calloway
Conducted by Tendrela
Produced by Elisabeth Sweet
From Visual Voice
Curated by
@_second_guess
Exhibiting in two places this week:
💻 “Stories We Tell Online”
@objktone @artontezos_ @postanika @micolmicolmicol @kikanicolela
October 21 in Berlin
🌵 Visual Voice, a solo show curated by Anika Meier & Kika Nicolela, presented by The Bearded Travelers
@aventurine_eth &
@tonyherrera
October 24 at
@artblocks_io Marfa Weekend (RSVP below!)
Thank you for taking a moment to watch + listen 🙏
