Exhibitions
John Akomfrah transforms listening into a political and sensory experience
An ambitious, innovative, and visually striking exhibition of John Akomfrah's work is on display at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, marking the first time the renowned British artist's work has been shown in Spain. Running from November 4 to February 8, the exhibition arrives in Madrid following its presentation at the British Pavilion of the 2024 Venice Biennale. Co-produced by TBA21, the exhibition continues the fruitful collaboration between the foundation and Akomfrah, a partnership that shares an interest in ecology, decolonial narratives, and listening as a form of resistance and activism.
Five monumental immersive video installations, known as Cantos, comprise the exhibition that John Akomfrah presents at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum. Through a powerful dialogue between image and sound, the British artist addresses essential issues of our time: colonial legacies, migration, racial injustice, and the climate crisis.
Water, present throughout the exhibition, becomes a recurring and symbolic motif: it represents both the journeys of the diaspora and the persistence of memory that survives the passage of time and continents. The exhibition, curated by Tarini Malik, opens in Madrid with a video installation in the museum's garden and a special introduction that brings together works from the Thyssen-Bornemisza collections, including pieces by artists such as Joan Miró, Lucio Fontana, and Yves Klein.
The exhibition Listening All Night To The Rain takes its name from an 11th-century poem by the Chinese writer and official Su Dongpo, composed during his period of political exile. In this text, the author meditates on the fleeting nature of existence and the inevitable transformation of the world around us. Inspired by these reflections on impermanence, the exhibition proposes a sensory and contemplative experience through a series of immersive installations that combine multichannel cinema, soundscapes, and visual elements. In these works, John Akomfrah delves into the themes that have characterized his career: postcolonialism, ecology, and aesthetics, incorporating on this occasion a particular emphasis on sound as a means to evoke memory, time, and transformation.
Joan Miró, Catalan Peasant with Guitar, 1924.
The exhibition is organized into a series of Cantos (Songs), works that adopt this name in allusion to the sonic dimension that articulates the entire project. Inspired by the idea of acoustic epistemology—a concept developed by ethnomusicologist Steven Feld to describe how sound influences the way we perceive and construct our cultural realities—Akomfrah conceives a complex sonic composition in each Canto. In these pieces, the soundtracks combine archival materials with field recordings, fragments of speeches, folk music, and devotional chants, weaving an auditory tapestry that transcends the documentary. Through this fusion, the artist elaborates a kind of poetic and political manifesto, in which listening becomes a conscious practice, a form of resistance and activism against the noise of the contemporary world.
