“Who are you without language?”

In a society in which we put so much importance on labelling yourself and communicating who you are, we often forget that it is not necessary to use words at all. I speak beyond words seeks alternative ways of expressing identity.

Inspired by the concept of black holes and their unknown properties, artist Zela Odessa Palmer explores what it means to accept the undefined and unidentified. As a queer woman of colour, she knows all too well what it is like to be underrepresented by language. When the existing lexicon is insufficient to describe our identity, we must turn to something beyond words to communicate who we are.

In her most recent work, the artist experiments with language and its absence through writing and drawing. The exhibition developed for an other world is Zela Odessa Palmer’s first solo show.

Zela Odessa Palmer is a visual artist from Amsterdam. She is currently based in The Hague, where she received her BFA in 2022 at the Royal Academy of Art.

Photos courtesy Jake Caleb