The Exiled Voice
The Exiled Voice is built around an archetypal memory: the sensation of being present yet disconnected, alone in a room full of people, carrying a story that cannot be told. Each performance begins with the sentence, "A story I cannot tell is…" The phrase dissolves into breath, gesture, or silence. Words fail. The body speaks instead. The work draws from personal trauma. Years earlier, after a medical crisis, I was unable to speak for a period and could not reintegrate into the cultural life around me. Museums and galleries felt unbearable. Crowds and overstimulation made me retreat into isolation. This state of exile became internal and relational. It marked the beginning of a long displacement, including my eventual move from Berlin to Spain. By sharing an untellable story through fragments and minimal gestures, the piece creates a meeting point between personal and collective forms of exile. It addresses the distance between the body and its voice, the self and its community, memory and the inability to articulate it. The Exiled Voice asks: What remains of a story when language breaks. And how does a voice return from exile without speaking.