Sedje Hemon - Emotion of Spirits

Dutch-Jewish painter and composer Sedje Hémon's (born Sedje Frank, 1923-2011) artistic practice was a deep deliberation on natural sciences, as well as an exploration of other ways of knowing. Her work was strongly influenced by her lived experience as a Shoah survivor and a member of the resistance movement. Educated as a violinist, incarceration during WWII left Hémon physically unable to play, upon which she turned her attention to painting—without ever abandoning music. During the 1950s and 1960s, she developed an intricate method for translating her paintings into musical scores. Hémon described her paintings as musical compositions, and their abstract forms are to be read as such—in relation to musical parameters such as duration, pitch, and timbre. Her visual works can actually be performed musically according to the system that she herself developed. Defiantly, Hémon worked to show the common origin and intersectionality of all arts and sciences, culminating in the development of a theory for the "integration of the arts."

Published on the occasion of the exhibition "Sedje Hémon. Imran Mir. Abdias Nascimento. Abstracting Parables", as part of the international Arnhem based art manifestation sonsbeek20→24, at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in 2022.

edited by Amal Alhaag, Aude Christel Mgba, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Gwen Parry, Ibrahim Cissé, Krista Jantowski, Zippora Elders
contributions by Amal Alhaag, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Ibrahim Cissé, Sophie Douala, Zippora Elders, Krista Jantowski, Aude Christel Mgba, Gwen Parry, Peter Jasper Wapperom, Elmyra van Dooren, Cannach MacBride, Siji Jabbar, Claire van Els, Marianna Maruyama, Maurice Rummens, Romy Rüegger, Jake Schneider.
graphic design: Sophie Douala

published by Archive Books
2022, 128 pages, 14 x 22 cm