Nikita Gale at NEST

Artist: Nikita Gale

Exhibition title: DRRRUMMERRRRRR

Venue: NEST, The Hague, The Netherlands

Date: September 6 – October 5, 2024

Photography: Images courtesy of the artists, Petzel Galery and Nest. Photos by Lotte van Uittert

Nikita Gale invites you to imagine a post-apocalyptic world in which humans no longer exist. What would this world sound like? As Gale puts it: “Any fantasy that humanity may have about its future is circumscribed by the reality of rising sea levels and an increasingly hotter atmosphere.”.

The drums, snares and cymbals in DRRRUMMERRRRRR are placed in such a manner that each drumkit cannot be played by one person simultaneously. Instead they are played by water. Using the sound of streaming water on the drums, Nikita Gale wonders how silence, sound and visibility can be combined with questions about the climate.

Gale has made various versions of the artwork DRRRUMMERRRRRR between 2019 and 2021, but created a extended, space-filling version of the installations for Nest in Laak.

With a background in anthropology and archeology, American artist Nikita Gale (1983) questions the role of power in policial, social and economical systems by looking at objects and materials. Gale works mostly with materials and objects that are connected to protest, rock music and post-war industrial architecture. Materials and objects like barricades, concrete, microphone-standards and spotlights. In doing so, Gale illustrates how space and sound can be political. An important concept in the work of Gale is “attention”. With the use of this term, Gale rejects idea that one particular sensory experience, such as watching or listening, is the most important and impactful way to experience art.