Pearla Pigao explains the innovative techniques behind her work ‘Weaving Voices’ in the exhibition ‘Nordic Threads’ at Galleri Nicolai Wallner in 2026.

Upon entering the exhibition space, the audience is embraced by Pearla Pigao’s undulating tapestry hung from the tall ceilings in the main gallery space. Its Norwegian wool composition dampens the sound around it, creating a sense of stillness and motion at once. The texture ripples and puckers just so, golden and yellow filaments glinting with the light of the room. The three-dimensional tapestry can be read as a new take on the centuries old practice, harkening back to deeply seated traditions of weaving and textile artistry in Norway used as an artistic, domestic and narrative building tool. However, Pigao takes the abstracting of a visual tradition and turns it on its head. ‘Weaving Voices’, originally exhibited in Pigao’s solo exhibition at Kunstneres Hus in Oslo, takes the human voice as its point of departure.

Being a musician as well as a visual artist, Pigao translates sound into matter. Each textile functions as an almost direct translation of a musical score into a woven pattern, created through innovative manipulations of computational programs. The works resist easy categorization; handwoven yet digitally informed, they blur the lines between expression, technology, and historically feminized craft.

For the work ‘Weaving Voices’, a composition of vocal recordings reflected on the meditative, corporal, and collective experiences that come from the act of singing and breathing. Scientifically speaking, singing in groups elevates human mood and binds a sense of unity. Humming and other forms of low octave of singing commonly used in meditation or religious practices have been proven to stimulate the vagus nerve, bringing the human body into a sense of stability and rootedness. At the same time, the human voice can be used for great violence.

Removed from the sound from which it was born, ‘Weaving Voices’ leads the viewer to speculate on the musical input. Some of Pigao’s works invoke patchy images of a woven basket, some like a topographic map or charting of heat waves on the horizon. Through this synaesthesia, ‘Weaving Voices’ reveals a new mode to read into time, creating something of a new media – a new language for understanding sound, a physical archive of our sonic world. Pigao provides a kaleidoscopic peephole from which to view a vast landscape of human expression.

Find the exhibition text here.