Echoes & Reverberations

Hayward Gallery Project Space

23 June–16 August 2015

Echoes & Reverberations explores sound as a medium of culture and history through the work of six contemporary artists, largely based in the Arab region. Using a variety of media, the artists explore the performative nature of different sounds – such as field recordings, hymns and oral story-telling – as well as their ability to both conjure and challenge cultural memory.

Echoes and reverberations are present versions of a sound from the past, modified or imperfectly recalled. Recollection, and the act of re-telling, is examined in Jumana Emil Abboud’s A Happy Ending part II: Two Skins (2015), which draws on motifs from Palestinian folk-tales and ceremonies and considers objects as vessels for personal stories. Basma Alsharif’s film explores the relationship between subjective experience and political history, while the effect of trauma and dislocation on the way that a place is recalled – and represented in visual and oral culture – is the subject of Samah Hijawi’s Paradise Series (2013).

In several works in the exhibition, sound is used to recall specific cultures and practices. Anas Al-Shaikh’s film My land, 2 (2009) features a hymn of preparation sung during the Gulf region’s pearl-diving era, while Magdi Mostafa’s sound-sculpture is made up of sounds from his neighbourhood in Cairo, including the Friday call to prayer. Finally, Joe Namy’s installation – a poetic deconstruction of a harmonium – forms just part of the artist’s investigation into the instrument’s complex geopolitical history.

The experience of listening is central to Echoes & Reverberations and a number of new performances relating to the gallery-based artworks will take place on 18 July. See the website or freesheet for further details.

An online catalogue produced in collaboration with Ibraaz Platform 009 is available at www.ibraaz.org

Echoes & Reverberations is co-curated by Aaron Cezar, Director, Delfina Foundation and Cliff Lauson, Curator, Hayward Gallery with Jane Scarth, Residency and Projects Manager, Delfina Foundation and Eimear Martin, Dominik Czechowski, Assistant Curators, Hayward Gallery.

The exhibition is a collaboration between Hayward Gallery, Delfina Foundation, the Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah and Shubbak: A Window on Contemporary Arab Culture, 11–26 July 2015.

With additional support from Art Basel Crowdfunding Initiative and A. M. Qattan Foundation.