A Thousand Secrets is an immersive, multi-sensory exhibition that engages the sonic multiplicity and opacity of water as a provocation for alternative modes of collectively listening to a world in crisis. Dionne Brand (2002) describes the sound of the ocean as a “thousand secrets, all whispered at the same time.” Inspired by Brand, A Thousand Secrets holds multiple registers of world-making in tense relation, and grapples with the ineffable stories of the sea that are, “inaudible to ordinary ears but still detectable with the right listening device, like the mother’s ear” (Habila 2019). Working against the spectacle of human suffering, each artwork in A Thousand Secrets unsettles conventional listening devices to uncover entangled, nonlinear histories of extraction and whispered traces of the otherwise through the transformative properties of the ocean.

Featured Artists:

Beatrice Glow

Renée Green

Deborah Jack

Tuan Andrew Nguyen

Trevor Paglen

Tabita Rezaire