Yacine Tilala Fall: Making Something that Feels Real and Truthful

Yacine Tilala Fall, Utterances – Terre I and II, 2024, horse leather, willow, water, indigo, salt, inflated steel, cow stomach, suture, time, turmeric, ceramic, porcelain, wax cast suturing tools, sound, and brass.

There is an overarching belief that winters in Provincetown are quiet. Au contraire. As I enter the campus of the Fine Arts Work Center (FAWC) at 24 Pearl Street, people are gathering in the courtyard or mingling and eating in the welcoming Stanley Kunitz Common Room and Hudson D. Walker Gallery. The February FAWC Friday Artist Talk and Reading, presenting painter Tschabalala Self and author Paul Harding, has been greatly anticipated, and the feeling in the room is electric when current Fellow Yacine Tilala Fall introduces Self with this observation: “In her work, I find an interrogation, an awe, and a seeking.”

Self followed, stating, “I want to make something that feels real and truthful — the only thing that can liberate people is the truth.”

These words resonate for Fall, the making of something that feels real and truthful in the creation of her own sculptures, paintings and performance work. “I think that my materials need to be extremely visceral and do what I want them to do without compromise,” said Fall, who was set to follow a pre-med track in college — until she discovered clay, a medium that so engaged her, she decided fine art was her path.