March 2, 2023

Kaya Wilkins (Okay Kaya) at Musée d’Orsay

Speciwomen is pleased to premiere footage for Okay Kaya’s performance at Musée d’Orsay from December 2022; shot and edited by Speciwomen’s long-time collaborator Louise Le Meur.

“Consciousness is layers, non-linear layers that come forward through various means of expression. There is something about the way the light enters one’s consciousness when touched by Okay Kaya’s sounds. Something somehow deepest, at the very origin of the psyche, where all branches of the mind begin growth, apart from one another, into swirls. Those rays of light, I have felt them, completely, when hearing Okay Kaya perform in various spaces throughout the world. However, there is something important in bringing such consciousness into the institution that is the Musée d’Orsay; a place that was itself the origin for many voyages, a train station, a place of passing, seeing many lives move through it. Today, as a museum, it is a space of collection; where minds come to feed themselves, and souls to be forgotten.

On December 8, 2022, Okay Kaya performed on the ground of the Musée d’Orsay, in front of a large crowd, alongside Fransizka Aiger. At the time, the museum was showing a retrospective of Edvard Munch’s work. Munch is known for his layers of consciousness, his forgotten notes piled in drawers, all his thoughts, and his multi-faceted paintings that revolutionized the modernist gaze. The Musée d’Orsay, like all world institutions, celebrates great artists, and helps their legacy live on. They facilitate the entry of masterpieces into the consciousness of crowds, showcasing those works for the sake of visual pleasure and art historical education. Speciwomen likes to think of itself as a museum. A space of collection where people from all over the world can come discover, learn, and recharge themselves through visual culture.

For each project brought to our community, we pair artists together so that the essence of their making will be able to come forth, beyond the realm of the physical, through the landscape of digital media. I could not think of a better person to lead us through the translation of the physical into the digital realm of representation than Louise Le Meur. As a mirror to how Okay Kaya is able to reach the deepest through her sounds, Le Meur collects and re-purposes light. Through her gaze, she is able to transform meaning. Her lens contains multitudes that I am still ceaselessly astonished by after over a decade of collaboration and friendship. Moving through memory as if it were a sea that was to be sorted into a mass of luminescent blades, Le Meur’s consciousness orchestrates itself in direct dialogue with Okay Kaya’s layers. The landscapes of images, the landscapes of sounds.”

– Philo Cohen

About the artists

Kaya Wilkins is a Norwegian-American Berlin-based musician, composer, and artist who records and performs as Okay Kaya. Okay Kaya has released numerous acclaimed albums, her most recent titled SAP was entirely written, performed, engineered, and produced by Wilkins with guest appearances by many collaborators and reviewed with widespread praise. Other releases include, Both (2018), Watch This Liquid Pour Itself (2020) which won the Spellemann Award for best Indie/Alternative (2021), Surviving Is The New Living (2020), and The Incompatible Okay Kaya (2021). Wilkins has collaborated with artists including Onyx Collective, Anne Imhof, Porches, King Krule, Deem Spencer, L’Rain, Austin Lee, and Adinah Dancyger amongst others. Wilkins has exhibited work at Melk in Oslo (2022), Entrance in New York (2022), K4 gallery in Oslo (2021) and had a solo exhibition titled SANDPLAY at Etage Projects in Copenhagen (2021). Wilkins premiered a series of performances at MUNCH in Oslo as part of their new live program (2021) and at the Musee d’Orsay (2022). Okay Kaya has toured extensively around the world for over 10 years and is starting a US tour in April 2023 coming off a sold out European tour at the end of 2022.

Louise Le Meur is a French Danish multidisciplinary artist, living from sea to sea between Marseille, Paris and Copenhagen. Starting with photography, most of her work has been revolving around the idea of light. In 2021, she started Lys over sea, a jewelry project aiming to share light from hand to hand through crystal rings. In her own words, it’s a crystal experiment willing to create community and connection. While being multifaceted, her main form of expression remains video. Lately, she has been focusing on filming music and live performances, using her lens to capture transcending feelings and tenderness.