Sounding Bodies

Sounding Bodies transforms space into an instrument. Through painting, sculpture, and performance, the exhibition explores how sound resonates through material and form, revealing tension, movement, and connection.

The sculptural sound installation at the center of the space features an amplified upright piano entwined with woolen threads. This structure integrates performers, objects, and space, making the entire exhibition an immersive composition. Live performances activate the installation, generating sound through movement, tension, and touch. Suspended threads are bowed to produce sound, objects are reimagined as resonant bodies.

Minna Etein’s large-scale thread-based paintings stem from the intention to grow and explore the relationship between the sonic and visual realms. They function as music scores, emerging from the artists’ field recordings and incorporating salvaged yarn from their past performances. The works imprint the memories of localities and performative actions onto surfaces, carrying living traces of invisible gestures and movements.

The exhibition reflects on histories of gendered labor, textiles, and overlooked artistic practices, particularly those tied to women’s work. Sounding Bodies asks: What does it mean to listen? To feel resonance move through us? How do materials hold memory?

Here, sound is more than an auditory experience—it is a physical force, shaping and dissolving boundaries between body, object, and space.

Part of this project was supported by Culture Moves Europe, a project funded by the European Union through Goethe Institut.

Disclaimer: This work was produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Union.

minna-etein.com

soundcloud.com/elo-masing