The Silence

Siegel is known for her meticulously constructed works that trace and perform systems of value, examine relationships between objects and spaces, and expose the plasticity of the moving image through sound and performance. Her compelling, multi-layered approach often reveals new meaning in narrativizing systems of power and economic structures as it examines the very aesthetics and mechanisms of image and sound production.

A double-screen video installation composed of two alternating segments—each performed and filmed in churches designed by Sigurd Lewerentz: St. Mark’s in Stockholm and St. Peter’s in Klippan—The Silence considers the relationship between architecture, music, sound and the immaterial.

The Silence behaves much like a two-sided vinyl album – with each “side”, or video projection, performing a musical score based on the unique brick-patterned walls of the buildings, and played by the distinctive church organs Lewerentz designed for each space. The uncanny similarity between Lewerentz’s brickwork and player piano scores—paper rolls dotted with patterns of small, perforated absences that generate ghostly “self-playing” music—alludes to larger existential questions of presence and absence, sound and silence, that often guide or contravene spiritual life, and thus imbue ‘The Church’ as a unique architectural space wherein such inquiries take shape.

Amie Siegel’s work is featured in international museum collections and widely exhibited around the globe. The Silence (2022) is Siegel’s first work made and exhibited in Sweden. The artist’s recent works include Asterisms (2021), exhibited at the 34^th São Paulo Biennial, Brazil and Bloodlines (2022), currently on display at the Scottish National Museum Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh and Thomas Dane Gallery, London.