Artist and SoundS student Farhad Farzali is currently exhibiting a sound installation Speech Therapy at Kunsthaus Graz as part of theFreeing The Voices exhibition. 

Farzali's work Speech Therapy refers to his treatment as a child for stuttering over a long period of time. In addition to medical treatment, he practiced speech exercises from a notebook given to him by a friend of a friend of his mother. This unique Soviet speech therapy notebook from 1985, full of exercises and rules, once belonged to a teenage girl who was being treated for stuttering in Kyiv.

For eight long years, Farhad worked diligently on these exercises for two hours a day, alone in a private room. Over time, the therapeutic nature of the exercises began to take on an aesthetic quality, evolving into rhythmic poetry and mantra-like incantations. He used several exercises from the notebook as a score for his sound installation.

This installation includes Farzali’s recordings of his long vocal exercises – the sustained vowels ‘A, O, U, I, E’ as well as ‘M’ and ‘N’ – in a single breath. On two of the channels he sings these long vowels and consonants (as suggested by the notebook). On the other two channels he recites repeated syllables ‘kp-a, kp-o, kp-u, kp-i; pr-a, pr-o, pr-u, pr-i; d-a, d-o, d-u, d-i’ and so on, which his mother added to the speech notebook to help him with his specific speech difficulties as a child. 

Everything we hear can also be read on the wall of the room, where Farzali makes the experience more tangible by reproducing the notebook exercises in chalk.

Speech Therapy debuted in an online format in 2020 at Galerie Barbara Thumm, curated by Thibaut de Ruyter, as part of a lockdown-themed project referencing Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting in a Room.

Farhad Farzali works with sound, traditional and contemporary music and folklore. His work is strongly motivated by the exploration of the different historical and cultural contexts of Azerbaijan and its neighbouring countries, as well as by his personal physical limitations.

Freeing the Voices runs from the 28th of February until the 24th of August and features works by Noor Abed, Marina Abramović, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Babi Badalov, selma banich, CO2... a couple of artists, VALIE EXPORT, Farhad Farzali, Essa Grayeb, Ida Hiršenfelder, Saodat Ismailova, Anna Jermolaewa, Mikhail Karikis, Anton Kats, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, Brandon LaBelle & Octavio Camargo, Katalin Ladik, Lucia Nimcová, Lala Raščić, Antoni Rayzhekov, Gerhard Rühm, Selma Selman, ŠKART & NONpractical Women, Mladen Stilinović, Irena Z. Tomažin, Nora Turato, Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec

To find out more about Farhad's work visit his website here: https://farzali.today/