artnexus #60

Oswaldo Maciá (Cartagena, Colombia, based in London) makes a pertinent point regarding his work when he defines himself as an audio-sculptor, because he experiments in the intervention of internal spaces by means of sound waves. Confronting contemporary culture’s imposition of messages, Maciá generates his own means of communication, reclaiming an ability that, in his judgment, mankind must never lose.

Maciá uses his everyday observations in his work not as visual expressions but from the standpoint of auditory perception. These are sounds that can be produced by various animal species, as in Tomorrow we will have a cloudy day, or the two thousand bird sounds of Something going on above my head, a symphony composed on the basis of recordings of birdsongs from around the world.

But besides using those songs, human voices are also a resource for the expression of sensations, feelings of joy, or pain. Voices that in works like Vesper gather the testimonies of 55 Caribbean-region women speaking in seven different languages. Traversing the region, tape recorder in hand, Maciá gathered the story of the best experience in each one of his interviewee’s lives.

For the work that appears on our cover, Surrounded in tears, Maciá focuses on the sound of crying, which in his view “is a language to which, due to cultural impositions, we haven’t learned to listen.” 

IVONNE PINI