Exhibition Guide
sounds like her Gender, Sound Art & Sonic Cultures
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Contents
Introduction Sounds Like Her is a touring exhibition produced by New Art Exchange ( NAE ) and curated by Christine Eyene with Melanie Kidd (Director of Programmes at NAE ). The
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
show brings together seven women artists from diverse backgrounds, each exploring sound as a medium or subject matter in innovative ways: Ain Bailey (UK), Sonia Boyce
Ain Bailey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
MBE RA (UK), Linda O’Keeffe (Ireland/UK), Elsa M’bala
(Cameroon/Germany), Madeleine Mbida (Cameroon),
Sonia Boyce. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Magda Stawarska-Beavan (Poland/UK) and Christine Sun
Elsa M’bala. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Kim (USA). Collectively the selected artworks broaden existing approaches to sound art, and contest Eurocentric
Madeleine Mbida. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
and patriarchal frameworks that have informed sound art
Linda O’Keeffe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
practice and, arguably continue to dominate the scene today.
Magda Stawarska-Beavan . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Christine Sun Kim. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
The exhibition has been developed by Christine Eyene, an art historian and curator whose practice includes an interest in contemporary African art, gender narratives and sound art. The theme developed from Eyene’s research
Curator’s Essay by Christine Eyene. . . . . 23
on African rhythmic patterns, particularly in relation to her Cameroonian heritage and her interest in Bikutsi – a traditionally female musical genre from the region. It was also
About New Art Exchange. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
inspired by an interaction with varied sound art platforms supporting the work of female practitioners.
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
The essay by Eyene (pages 23–29) describes the origins and context of the exhibition in more detail, and to follow are detailed statements about each of the artists and their selected artworks.
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Ain Bailey The Pitch Sisters, 2012 Multichannel sound installation DURATION: 23 MINUTES 40 SECONDS
Ain Bailey is a sound artist, living and working in London. Her current practice involves an exploration of sonic autobiographies, architectural acoustics and live performance, as well as collaborations with performance, visual and sound artists. She is also a doctoral scholar at Birkbeck, University of London. Bailey’s sound installation, The Pitch Sisters, stems from a comment made by a friend that they had observed a shift in the average pitch of women’s voices. The friend attributed this possible change to the notion that women wanted to sound more authoritative – just like men. The Pitch Sisters is also a response to the line: “The preferred pitch of a woman’s voice is A flat below middle C” from Peggy and Fred in Hell: The Prologue (1985) directed by Leslie Thornton, a film Bailey encountered at a screening curated by the artist Rosa Barba at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. The key word in the above quote is ‘preferred’. Preferred by whom? In conducting research for the artwork, Bailey observed that the concept of ‘preferred pitch’ was a heteronormative one, tending to reflect what men find attractive in women. The Pitch Sisters builds on this potentially 5
fictitious idea to present what a female sonic universe would sound like if women’s voices indeed vocally hung around an A flat below middle C. Visitors are invited to consider this premise by stepping into The Pitch Sisters installation – a circular layout of speakers playing the voices of 46 women performing the aforementioned note. While the voices are heard as one chorus, the overall sound line and the direction of each speaker oriented towards the centre of the room, creates an acoustic ‘sweet spot’, allowing for a distinction of the different vocal timbres.
Sonia Boyce Devotional Series, 1999–present Mixed-media installation, dimensions variable COMMISSIONED BY NEW ART EXCHANGE
Artist Sonia Boyce, MBE RA , lives and works in London. She is
The Pitch Sisters becomes an immersive and mesmerising
also Professor of Black Art and Design at University of the Arts
environment providing a nearly spiritual or meditative
London where she leads the AHRC funded Black Artists and
experience to contemplate the rich tapestry of women’s
Modernism research project.
voices whilst questioning fixed notions of gender.
Her practice comprises drawing, painting, print, photography, collage, film, installation and sound art. Her early work during the 1980s addressed issues of race and gender as a contemporary urban experience. Her art practice has evolved as a conceptual approach that involves ‘improvisational collaborations’ with multidisciplinary artists and audiences notably through voice, sound and performance. This new commission by NAE is part of Sonia Boyce’s Devotional Series, an ongoing and ever growing archive-based project. The installation includes the immersive Devotional Wallpaper featuring the names of two hundred black British females in the music industry, each name surrounded by elaborately hand-drawn and repetitive concentric lines. Laid over this are placards of various sizes featuring posters, magazines and other printed material about the performers sourced from Boyce’s Devotional archive.
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The Devotional Series was first started in 1999 with a group of women from Liverpool, brought together by the artist. Boyce invited the participants to recall the first record they ever bought and to name a black British female singer. It took some time before a black British singer was remembered, even though their music and presence had been a part of everyone’s lives. Like background noise, these women had been erased from popular conciousness. This led Boyce, with the assistance of many contributors, to augment a collective and historical map.
Elsa M’bala Bia Kud Si 3, 2017 Mixed media interactive installation Elsa M’bala grew up in Cameroon and moved to Germany with her family in 1999 before relocating to Yaounde,
Shirley Bassey was the first performer nominated, and Boyce
Cameroon in 2012. After completing her studies in Social
continues to receive nominations of names today. For this
Sciences in Münster, Germany, she spent a few years
show, Nottingham has contributed the names of Valerie
travelling through Europe and was introduced to various
Robinson and Harleighblu to be added to the wallpaper. These
artistic spheres. She began performing as a singer-songwriter,
two performers are local black women who, amongst others,
musician and poet before venturing into sound art in 2010.
are making significant contributions to the UK music scene.
Her work addresses African and Cameroonian history
This new development of the Devotional Series continues
through archive material, and gender discourses. Her
Sonia Boyce’s endeavour to tease out our collective memory
sonic experiments use acoustic instruments, traditional
and inscribe the contribution of black female performers to
Cameroonian sonic heritage, and technology including sound
British and world music histories and cultures.
machines, the internet and digital culture. Bia Kud Si 3 is a new work commissioned for Sounds Like Her. It consists of a Cameroonian slit drum called a nkul coupled with a Raspberry Pie, a small computer that can be used to learn programming in a playful way. Helped with instructions drafted by the artist, visitors are invited to put on headphones, listen to a set of rhythms performed by a student of Cameroonian master percussionist Man Ekang, and repeat the sounds heard. The graphics on the screen inform the players as to whether they have managed to play the rhythmic structure accurately. As the participants interact
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with the instrument, they become active contributors to the exhibition’s sonic environment. The title of the work is an Ewondo phrase – a language spoken by the Beti people mostly located in the region of Yaounde, Cameroon’s capital. The three words translate as follows:
Madeleine Mbida
‘Bia’ = we, ‘kud’ or ‘kut’ = beat, ‘si’ = ground. It is a spelling
Madeleine Mbida lives and works in Nkongsamba, Cameroon.
variation of the word Bikutsi, the traditional music and dance
She belongs to a new generation of Cameroonian artists
style practiced by the Cameroonian Beti people.
whose practice explore local traditions with an innovative gaze. Her paintings shown here explore Cameroon’s Bikutsi music and dance movements – the multi-coloured outlines of dancers and the chromatic compositions are interpretations of Bikutsi’s rhythms. These paintings have a very personal meaning as they are part of Mbida’s enquiry into her own identity through that of her dad, who was a Beti (people from Yaounde and its surroundings) and passed away when she was only one year old. As such, her work bridges both personal history and collective cultural heritage. Mbida’s two paintings of interlaced figures feature a group of male dancers seemingly wearing shorts, and female dancers with skirts, and traditional neck and ankle ornaments. The women are performing a dance movement with their feet called “etegue meko’o” while the men are ‘breaking’ their hips in what is called “etegue ankug”. These are two of the moves that characterise Bikutsi which actually means “beat the earth” or “smash the ground” in Ewondo (the language of Cameroon’s Beti people). The energy of the dancers is rendered through the overlaid outlines that represent both multiple dancers and the notion of movement in a way that conjures up an aesthetic first developed by Italian Futurists in the early twentieth century.
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The chromatic combinations with red and green tones are derived from the Bikutsi quartertone tempo of 6/8 and 9/8 rhythmic patterns. In these works, Mbida associates colour and music along the notions of rhythm, scale, pitch and bar. The colour grading declines in stripes of six scales and the stretches of plain colour equate eight bars. The overlaid patchwork is organised according to its own logic or painterly algorithm which sequences are set on a 6/8 pattern. The numbers inscribed on the canvases are both an indication of music tempo and a made-up pictorial sign with the 6/8 arrangement creating a number that does not exist in real life. In other paintings, Mbida also plays with the possible inversions between number 6 and 9.
Linda O’Keeffe Hybrid Soundscapes I, II, III & IV, 2017 5 channel sound installation with digital prints on paper Dimensions variable DURATION: 12 MINUTES 10 SECONDS
Linda O’Keeffe is a Lecturer in Sound at the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts, Lancaster University. She is also the founder the Women in Sound, Women on Sound
Together the paintings convey the abstract nature of music
organisation and editor of the Interference Journal: A Journal
(or sound). They also speak to the invisible process whereby
of Auditory Cultures. In 2014 O’Keeffe received a doctorate
music triggers a response through body movements and are a
in sociology. Her research explored the societal impact of
testimony to the persistence of cultural traditions transmitted
sounds on urban communities, including examining sound as
over generations to the present day. In fact, the hip movement
a social construct similar to gender and class. Her current
found in Bikutsi and other traditional African dances can be
work, which includes her new piece for Sounds Like Her, is
seen in hip hop and other forms of street dance, that are no
a move towards a transdisciplinary approach to examining
longer solely performed by African people or members of
environmental problems.
the diaspora. They have become part of increasingly hybrid mainstream cultures across the world.
Shown here, Hybrid Soundscapes explores the impact of renewable technologies on the sonic environments of urban and rural spaces. The research was triggered when O’Keeffe was recording the sounds of an Icelandic hydroelectric power station in 2015. She observed how the sound permeated beneath the river, within the landscape and within her own body – the latter producing feelings of distress and physical nausea. In addition, this structure, owned and operated by a multi-national company, seemed to employ
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few people, offering no potential economic opportunities for communities within Iceland, a country now dependent on hydro power. This raised questions about the development of new technologies to tackle climate change which might not be examined for their potential detrimental societal or environmental impacts.
Magda Stawarska-Beavan Mother Tongue I, II & IV, 2009
O’Keeffe also began documenting the impact of the large
Screenprint on paper with audio
wind farms of the Terra Alta Region of Northern Spain and
106 X 60 CM EACH
the societal impact of the wind farms in the North Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Barrow in Furness. In summer 2017 O’Keeffe visited China to explore the soundscape of both rural and urban environments in Beijing, China which aims to be the largest producer of renewable energies on the planet.
Mother Tongue combines traditional printmaking and digital audio to explore the speech development of the artist’s son from the sound of his first cry, recorded as she gave birth, to the words and sentences he was forming at three years old. Pull the cable on the CD player to trigger these 3 minute clips.
This artwork represents these four different locations and
The corresponding screenprints illustrate the soundwaves and
combines the sounds of renewable technologies, rural and
phonetic interpretations of the sounds and words heard on the
natural soundscapes, the sounds of communities and urban
recordings. The prints allowed Stawarska-Beavan to preserve
noisescapes. The combined graphic score/sound map and
these temporary sounds as visual artefacts. Collectively, the
sound work represent a composite of O’Keeffe’s time spent
sound and prints document the ephemeral moments in the
in each geographic place. Although each wall represents
development of her child’s relationship with language. In
a different location, as a whole, the work intends to be a
one of the works we hear parent and son repeating words in
holistic representation of the non-linear way in which sound
Polish and English, demonstrating the passing of identity and
moves through a space and has an impact beyond its origin.
language from parent to child. Transliteration I, II & lll, 2011 Screenprint on black Somerset paper 112 X 76 CM EACH
In the Transliteration series, Stawarska-Beavan uses text from the International Phonetic Alphabet (a Latin-based system that standardises the representation of the sound of language across languages) and graphic elements such as a 14
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grid and gradations of lines to capture the ephemeral quality of sound and intimacy of a conversation. However, the coded phonetic text obstructs the reading of the work – the viewer can search for familiar signs in the text, but to break the code they must sound out the signs and listen to their own voice to decode the narrative. Any person able to read phonetics could still pronounce the words correctly without necessarily understanding their meaning. This creates an experience between inclusion and exclusion as the viewer encounters the intimacy of a conversation that is never fully revealed. Who/Wer, 2017 Video DURATION: 17 MINUTES
Who/Wer (‘wer’ meaning ‘who’ in German) is a split screen video that explores both the familiarity and strangeness of a city’s soundscape, as experienced by both a stranger to the city (the artist) and by an insider (Austrian playwright
Christine Sun Kim Christine Sun Kim lives and works in Berlin. Being deaf since birth, she developed her own visual language employing elements from various information systems – graphic and musical notation, body language and American Sign Language (ASL ) – as a means to expand their communication properties and invent a grammar and structure for her artworks. The pieces selected for Sounds Like Her, mostly comprise of two-dimensional works and traces or documentation of her performances. Works on Paper, 2014–2016
Wolfgang Kindermann). We witness the artist following
The selected works on paper highlight Kim’s visual
Kindermann through the streets of his hometown, Vienna,
representations of music, silence and her own voice. These
placed against two narratives. On the left screen, black and
pieces combine graphic elements and text in a seemingly
white images of the playwright seen at a distance flicker
minimal aesthetic that opens up a much more complex
to the rhythm of his narration in German. On the right, a
symbolism.
colour video of the places discussed in the narrative, set to the flow of the artist’s voice telling the same story in English, adds a sense of familiarity for the English speakers. The contrast of imagery, language and gender, emphasizes the duality of perspectives. Like Stawarska-Beavan’s prints, the piece explores the complex relationship between image, text, language, voice, and sound in the creation of our individual interpretations and experiences of place. 16
In the sketches addressing her voice, Kim expands the size of two musical notes, tied crotchets, with the tie placed in the upper or the lower base of a note shaft. Here Kim plays with different forms of musical notation with multiple crotchets or ties which, just like in Magda Stawarska-Beavan’s works on paper, may call for a form of decoding accessible to those with knowledge of music theory. By using music notes as part of her aesthetic language, Kim transcribes on paper visual 17
signs that have a sonic resonance to some, but remain silent
typed or created – which Kim transposes into ‘real time
to others. Those signs, combined with phrases expressing
silence’. The arrows forming a frame within the edges of the
her voice’s complexity or continued utterance, attest to the
paper evoke the highly subjective and possible definitions of
nuances of the artist’s voice not just from a literal perspective,
the term “silence”.
but also from a metaphorical one: the voice that sees her claim her place in a society that values the more ‘vocal’ of its individuals. It is this aspect of society that Kim knows all too well, both as an everyday experience, and in the field of contemporary art. As a Deaf artist, her work challenges the hearing-dominated world in which sound, she rightfully contends, is a visual currency.
In Right to Silence, empty staff lines are drawn at the centre of the paper. The captions written above the lines seem to refer to the spatial location (or spatialisation) of sound, but to Kim it is only channelling silence. Reference to mono and stereo audio systems seems to convey the sense of perception of sound, be it ‘contagious’ as the drawing indicates, or the vibrations of bass.
Jazz Music Upstairs and Very Fast Rap Song, are part of Kim’s Just Music series. The artist explains that she came up with
Documentation of What Can a Body Do?
a list of sound captions and used quarter notes and ‘legato’
Performance at The Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery,
to visualise each caption. ‘Legato’ is a musical term for a
Haverford, USA (2012)
group of smoothly connected notes, tied together by a line
DURATION: 5 MINUTES 21 SECONDS
underneath or above. There is no space for silence between each group. Each note goes from one pitch to another without stopping, unlike clear, separate notes. Contrary to a number of her other drawings, here the absence of staff lines (thin lines of a music sheet) owes to the fact that her idea of both high and low pitches probably differs from hearing individuals. This work is an example of how Kim imagines music when reading oversimplified captions or subtitles about music in movies. Music becomes a continuous sound informed by the story and images of each movie.
This video documentation of a live performance, and the resulting paintings, are Kim’s early explorations of sound art. As part of exhibition What Can a Body Do? at The Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford, USA (2012), Kim participated in a sound performance using field recordings of ambient sound she had captured from the college campus. This work was created by playing these sounds, and the artists own voice, through subwoofers with wooden boards placed on top. Ink and powder drenched quills, nails and cogs danced across the surface to the vibrations of the subwoofers and speakers
Real Time Silence and Right To Silence are visually interesting
beneath. The speaker drawings were then hung on the walls
in their contrasted effect of filled-up and emptied images. The
of the gallery space along with the drumhead, subwoofers,
first one is a reflection on real time text – a communication
paper, objects and wet materials, as physical and visual
system enabling text to be transmitted instantly as it is being
records of sound.
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Documentation of Face Opera II Performance at the Clader Foundation (2013) DURATION: 3 MINUTES 58 SECONDS
According to Kim, only roughly 30–40% of American Sign Language is produced with the hands, while the rest is expressed through facial expressions and body movement, adding a highly spatial aspect to this visual language. This video documents Face Opera II, a performance dealing with the importance of facial expression and body movement in communicating through sign language. In the performance, a group of prelingually* deaf participants, including the artist, take turns in acting as a choir ‘singer’ or conductor through the use of face markers or visual nuances (eyebrows, mouth, cheeks, eyes) to ‘sing’ with their faces alone without actually using their hands. * someone who was born with a hearing loss, or whose hearing loss occurred before they began to speak
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Curator’s Essay by Christine Eyene Sounds Like Her is an invitation to experience aural and visual environments created by Ain Bailey (UK), Sonia Boyce MBE RA (UK), Linda O’Keeffe (Ireland/UK), Elsa M’bala (Cameroon/ Germany), Madeleine Mbida (Cameroon), Magda StawarskaBeavan (Poland/UK) and Christine Sun Kim (USA), seven women artists working with or around sound. The show seeks to engage the visitors on a sensory level, by triggering both sonic memory and a curiosity for the unknown and the unfamiliar. Why feature only women, one might ask. This project responds to debates currently taking place in contemporary art in general – and music and sound art in particular. It was born out of an interaction with diverse sound art platforms and events, particularly those supporting the work of women artists. These included the symposium Women in Sound Women on Sound led by sound artist and lecturer Linda O’Keeffe at the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts in 2015. One of the main reasons behind this symposium was that, although sound art is a practice that has gained ground as a contemporary art form, women’s contributions to the field remain under-acknowledged in mainstream art writing. While women have been instrumental in addressing this invisibility, the symposium highlighted that many contemporary practitioners continue to experience various forms of gender bias in a discipline largely dominated by men.
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This is also the case with music. Some of the questions raised
Voegelin – both as member of audience and guest speaker,
by the debate Women in Music held at New Art Exchange
notably at their Sound::Gender::Feminism::Activism
in 2015 included the following: “Why are only 5% of (music)
conference, (UAL – London College of Communication,
producers industry-wide female? What challenges do women
November 2016) has enabled me to take my foray into sound
in the industry experience in the face of historic discrimination
from an intuitive approach to a curatorial enquiry both
and ongoing sexism?”
inscribed within, and challenging, established frames of reference.
A very notable example was reported by Icelandic experimental singer-songwriter Björk in the article “The
Sounds Like Her is the outcome of these encounters. It
Invisible Woman: A Conversation with Björk” by Jessica
proposes to pursue those conversations in the form of an
Hopper, published in the January 2015 issue of Pitchfork
exhibition, highlighting the knowledge and creativity forming
magazine. In this piece Björk mentioned the lack of
part of a variety of skills owned by women, but too often
photographic documentation of women at work, in the studio,
side-lined as marginal utterances, or complementary to
as a way to prove their active role in sound engineering
mainstream, male-dominated, practices and narratives. In
and production. Taking social media by storm, the article
doing so, the exhibition sets out to challenge preconceived
contributed to highlighting platforms like female:pressure
ideas about the relationship between women and machines
promoting musicians and visual artists in electronic music
or technology. Indeed, as musician and writer Tara Rodgers
and digital arts who identify as women. female:pressure was
reminds us in her introduction to Pink Noises: women on
created in 1998 by Vienna-based artist Electro Indigo as a
electronic music and sound (2010), historically, the emergence
response to the fact that the activities of women in the field
of the electronic tools used in music or sound is a direct
remain “less recognized and also easily forgotten”.
result of the technologies developed as part of the military, from broadcasting to controlling sound. The precision and
An important resource to also acknowledge is the CRiSAP
competence required to handle the related equipment has
(Creative Research into Sound Art Practice) at the University
always been associated with male characteristics, while the
of the Arts London, and its Her Noise Archive initiated by Lina
“non-technical” or “soft knowledge” identified as belonging to
Džuverović and Anne Hilde Neset in 2001. Both platforms
the realm of the female.1
investigate music and sound histories in relation to gender, and bring together a wide network of women artists who use
This observation opens up a whole range of questions. First
sound as a medium.
of all, techno-centred approaches to sound bring forward challenging issues on ethics around “small hands” labour
Engaging with the CRiSAP – its co-directors Cathy Lane,
practices, where it is often women from countries of the
Angus Carlyle and collaborators Holly Ingleton and Salomé
Global South assembling the components of machines
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instrumental to this male-dominated creative field. Secondly,
that led to this curatorial project, is in fact the result of my
not only does this raise the question of access to technology
personal experience of being exposed to African music as
from a material (or economical) and cultural perspective, it
a child. A music called Bikutsi (meaning ‘beat the earth’ or
also touches on sensory abilities.
‘smash the ground’) associated with the Ewondo-speaking Beti people from Cameroon. Traditionally a female genre used
From a cultural perspective, the history of sound art, like most
as a space to express female-oriented experiences, Bikutsi is
contemporary artistic practices, has always been anchored
both geographically and culturally specific. It is structured
within a Euro-American lineage. Yet, to take a central figure
around a set of particular fast-paced rhythmic patterns
like John Cage for instance – whose practice explored
played with balafons (African xylophones), nkul (slit drum)
experimental sound and music and their interaction with the
or mvet (a string instrument). It is accompanied by a dance
body in movement and modern dance – the very root of his
which, in itself, is an identity marker and whose movements
practice, its unusual and innovative character, lies in the fact
have since been appropriated by street dance.
that it partly drew from non-Western sonic cultures, namely Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Pacific Islands. 2
Knowledge of this African cultural heritage facilitated my understanding of some of the pioneers of Western minimal
Histories placing Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo, author of The
music, like Steve Reich for instance, and his approach to
Art of Noises (1913), as the first inventor of noise music, often
percussive rhythmic patterns after he spent time in Ghana
fail to account for a whole range of pre-existing practices
in 1970 and learned percussions from the master drummer
dismissed by the West as primitive inharmonious cacophonies,
Gideon Alorwoyie.
rather than being seen as part of a range of sounds developed from these cultures own experiments. In this respect Sounds
Sounds Like Her aims to provide a space for the visitors’ own
Like Her makes a point to not only challenge the patrilineal
culturally diverse experiences of sound to act as a point of
trajectory that has defined the history of sound art, it also
entry to this exhibition. There is not one linear narrative to
intends to call into question the Eurocentric frameworks that
follow. Rather it offers multiple moments or sonic chapters to
continue to dominate the scene today.
interact with.
Generally speaking, the association of technology with sound
Likewise, this exploration of sound has not been conceived
art gives it the aura of a specialist field that requires specific
to solely appeal to the ear. From the outset, the key premise
knowledge to understand it, especially in its more abstract
of this project has been to address forms of marginalisation
or non-narrative manifestations. This is not the case of this
existing in the field of sound art in terms of gender, culture,
exhibition. The intuitive approach to sound, mentioned earlier,
access to technology and sensory abilities. As such non-sonic
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materialisations of sound feature prominently in the exhibition.
ongoing Devotional Series, the names of over 200 black
They do so in prints by Madga Stawarska-Beavan who is
British female performers are inscribed on wallpaper which
giving shapes to words through sound waves, in Madeleine
is overlaid with placards featuring imagery of these women,
Mbida’s chromatic experiments based on Bikutsi’s rhythmic
plucked from concert announcements, fashion magazines
patterns, and in the work of Christine Sun Kim, whose
and other forms of popular culture. Boyce is interested in the
approach to sound as a Deaf artist is challenging many
collective memory, and how we have lived with the sound of
preconceived ideas about the medium. Music notes, scores,
these women – their music and presence has impacted our
text in her sketches, video, installation and performance
lives – yet they remain marginalised.
are ways for Kim to reclaim the audible, physical and social space. The exhibition also delves way down into the very
Boyce’s Devotional Series epitomises the essence of this
physicality of sound. Such an experience is explored by Ain
exhibition. The title Sounds Like Her refers to the notion of
Bailey in her installation The Pitch Sisters (2012), an immersive
occupying creative spaces, over time, and leaving one’s mark,
sound piece which vibrating intensity is set to permeate from
against gender, cultural and ability-based biases, against
the speakers’ circular installation to the visitors own body.
amnesia, whitewashing and cultural appropriation. Sounds Like Her is an assertion whereby “her” acts as a counter-
Elsa M’bala’s Bia Kud Si (2017), invites visitors to physically
discourse to a presumed male entitlement but is not limited
interact with the creation of sound and to consider the active
to a strict definition of gender. Most of all, it conveys the idea
process of listening. Linda O’Keeffe’s artwork extends the
of artistic voices, of authorship, of signatures whereby women
thinking in this exhibition beyond the personal and internal
artists are inscribing their names across various chapters of
experience of sound to consider the societal or environmental
the vast history of sound practices.
impacts of sound pollution in the context of renewable technologies. O’Keeffe questions these supposedly clean energy sources to reveal their detrimental effect on nature, community and economic models. In a new commission, O’Keeffe has brought together her research conducted in Iceland, Spain, England and China to describe the non-
1 Tara Rodgers, Pink Noises: women on electronic music and sound. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010, pp. 6–7. 2 Tamara Levitz, “Syvilla Fort’s Africanist Modernism and John Cage’s Gestic Music: The Story of Bacchanale.” The South Atlantic Quarterly, 104:1, Winter 2005, pp. 126–128.
linear way in which sound moves through a space and has an impact beyond its origin. Finally, Sonia Boyce’s artwork explores sound and the subconscious. In her installation, a new development of her
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About New Art Exchange
Acknowledgements
New Art Exchange (NAE ) is a contemporary arts space in
NAE and Christine Eyene would like to thank all the artists
Nottingham that celebrates the region’s cultural richness
who accepted our invitation to take part in Sounds Like Her
and diversity. It is the largest gallery in the UK dedicated
as well as the NAE team for their work in developing the
to culturally diverse contemporary visual arts and presents
exhibition and those individuals who voluntarily took part in
an ever-changing programme of art exhibitions, creative
the community planning meetings.
activities for families and young people, film screenings, symposiums, lectures, festivals and a live performance
At the University of Central Lancashire we thank Lubaina
programme of music, dance and theatre. NAE is the executive
Himid MBE , Professor of Contemporary Art and lead for the
producer of Nottingham Mela.
Making Histories Visible project and Adam Evans, School Lead for Research and Innovation.
Our programme of activities is dedicated to stimulating new perspectives on the value of diversity within art and society.
Sounds Like Her has been supported by Arts Council
Within our galleries we present the work of world renowned
England’s Strategic Touring funds.
British and international artists. Amongst others, past exhibitors have included: John Akomfrah, Hurvin Anderson, Leo Asemota, Zarina Bhimji, Faiza Butt, Nikhil Chopra, Yara El-Sherbini, Christian Marclay, Hetain Patel, Elizabeth Price, Rashid Rana, Larissa Sansour, Zineb Sedira, Yinka Shonibare and Nari Ward. Sounds Like Her forms part of NAE ’s touring programme supported by Strategic Touring funds. The exhibition has been curated by Christine Eyene with NAE ’s Director of
Published in 2017 by New Art Exchange on the occasion of the exhibition: Sounds Like Her 14 October 2017–3 January 2018 New Art Exchange 39–41 Gregory Boulevard, Hyson Green, Nottingham NG7 6BE UK www.nae.org.uk ISBN 978-0-9932659-6-9
Programmes, Melanie Kidd. www.nae.org.uk
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