Artist Spotlight: Robert Machiri

Harare-born, Berlin-based artist Robert Machiri performed a Houston iteration of sonic movements and archival recordings from the ongoing project "Pungwe Sound Trails" on November 9, 2024. Machiri’s practice of Pungwe is conceived as a series of ephemeral encounters that explore relationships between people, history, and memory through intersections of sound and spatial politics. Machiri conducted field recordings, interviews, and engagements in Houston related to the ongoing project.
"Pungwe Sound Trails" is curated by Erika Mei Chua Holum, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Assistant Curator at the Blaffer Art Museum and presented with the Houston Climate Justice Museum in conjunction with "Climate Migration: Displacement, Travel, Home", a series of art installations, expert panels, and public engagements that aim to deepen understanding and experiences of climate migration in Houston.
"Pungwe Sound Trails" is part of "Ecofictions and Understories", a city-responsive curatorial program curated by Erika Mei Chua Holum, Cynthia Woods Mitchell Assistant Curator at the Blaffer Art Museum and supported by the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, to speculate potential worlds for gathering, resisting, regeneration, and disruption persistent in artistic responses, organizing, and actions. The program connects practices of ecological and cultural safe-keeping through community organizing, sonic semiotics, and south-south relationality.
Filmed and edited by Jay Clark.