AMSTERDAM.- The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is presenting a new site-specific commission by Nora Turato titled i was empty and now i’m full. Turato created the work specifically for the wall opposite Lawrence Weiner’s Escalated from Time to Time (1973), located on the museum’s first floor, at Fonda Café. It responds both to the legacy of conceptual art and to the context of a museum café, where one eats and drinks before, after, or in between seeing art. The work engages with associations of mental and bodily fulfilment while introducing a playful visual language. Set in Comic Sans—a font originally derived from comic book lettering and now often used in the context of children’s books, nurseries, and schools—the sentence i was empty and now i’m full forms a circle, with its letters appearing in a warm, sunny yellow. A sound component forms an integral part of the work, alluding in particular to fulfilment through eating and reinforcing the role of the body in (aesthetic) experience. This emphasis reflects a broader shift in Turato’s practice over the past two years, in which a renewed sense of embodiment has become central.

I hear you, I hear you

i was empty and now im full was developed as an extension of Turato’s most recent body of work, marked by the site-specific video and sound installation I hear you, I hear you, which was part of the Stedelijk Museum’s IN SITU series between September 2024 and August 2025. Visitors accessed the work via the escalator from the basement, encountering an installation that combined bodily movement and sound with a monumental screen on which a series of changing words flashed in rapid succession. One of Turato’s most ambitious works to date, an edition of the piece has been donated by the artist to the museum.

pool7

From there, Turato developed a new performance, pool7, in which the titular phrase from I hear you, I hear you became a tantalising mantra—and a question: Do I hear YOU? Meaning: who do we actually hear when we speak through and with our devices? With pool7, Turato sought to reclaim language in an era dominated by AI-generated content. This marked a shift in her practice. Previously, Turato drew from the flood of language found online and on social media, engaging with its seductive, detached surfaces. In pool7, she turned inward, working entirely with self-written material that is fragile, personal, angry, and deeply embodied. In the performance, language emerged through the body—through convulsions, tremors, sighs, and other movements. pool7 was performed between June 5 and October 28, 2025, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; and Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin.

In contrast to previous performances, no video recording of pool7 exists. Instead, Turato recorded a direct-to-disc vinyl on November 6, 2025, at Record Industry, Haarlem. The record has been released in an edition of 500 as a commission by the Stedelijk Museum, with support from Ammodo, the Mondriaan Fund, and Stichting Niemeijer Fonds.