Tania Candiani: Waterbirds: Migratory Sound Flow | Nov 2023 - March 2024

Locust Projects presents Waterbirds: Migratory Sound Flow, by Mexican artist Tania Candiani. Interested in language, sound and the afterlife of obsolete technologies, Tania Candiani has created devices that translate images, shapes, and words into sounds and music by repurposing looms, keyboards, typewriters and other old mechanical devices to create wind, chord or percussion instruments. She sees these objects as interfaces between “the soul of the machine” and other types of sensibilities, including human, animal and non-human, and often references ancestral knowledge and stories.
Waterbirds: Migratory Sound Flow, originally commissioned for the 23rd Biennale of Sydney and curated by José Roca, is a hanging “river” made with tree branches collected from a riverbank in Mexico many of which are also native to South Florida.
The massive, suspended organic shape was reimagined to respond to Locust Projects' architecture and reflect the waterways and migratory water bird species of the Everglades and South Florida.
"Candiani's Waterbirds installation poetically combines nature and technology to reflect on migration, language and intertwined ecosystems through birdsong,” said Lorie Mertes, Executive Director of Locust Projects. “With South Florida, particularly the Everglades, serving as a major stopover on the Atlantic Flyway for migratory birds, Tania’s work is poignantly relevant here and provides a massive visual of the birds' path.” The project explores the idea of traveling territories through sound and crossing living bodies of water linked by the movement of birds: watercourses that resemble a blood or neuronal system to metaphorically reflect on migration, bird language and ecosystems.
Tania Candiani: Waterbirds: Migratory Sound Flow at Locust Projects is a Knight Digital Commission
It is presented with major support provided by The Jorge M. Pérez Family Foundation.
The exhibition is on view through March 16, 2024, Wednesdays-Saturdays from 11am-5pm.
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Video by Alexa Caravia