Audra Wolowiec
Audra Wolowiec, anechoic, ink on vellum, 21 x 22 inches, 2020.
Ink drawing of a figure inside an anechoic chamber (anechoic = without echo). Traced from an enlarged photograph, the halftone pattern creates a sense of visual noise and the person's attention appears to be focused inwards, embodied listening.
Audra Wolowiec, voiceprint (we the people), offset print on paper with laser cut commas, 26 x 22 inches, 2021.
In music notation, the comma is the mark for the breath. This spectrogram data and commas are from a vocal reading of the preamble to the US Constitution.
Audra Wolowiec, oo o o, digital print, 2021.
In the book Water and Dreams, Gaston Bachelard writes about the "o's" of water, a slippage in translation occurs: the "o's" of water (eau), the whirlwinds and the lovely roundness of their sounds. He continues: liquidity is a principle of language; language must be filled with water. These letter o's were excavated from Agua Viva by Clarice Lispector (loosely translated as Living Water).
Audra Wolowiec is an interdisciplinary artist whose work oscillates between sculpture, installation, text, and performance with an emphasis on sound and the material qualities of language. She is interested in how sound can create spaces of listening and connection. Her work has been shown at MASS MoCA, CCS Bard Hessel Museum, ICA at MECA (Maine College of Art), Art in General, The Poetry Project, and Microscope Gallery. Recent features and writing have appeared in BOMB Magazine, Sound American, and Dia:Beacon. Wolowiec currently teaches at Parsons School of Design and runs the publishing platform Gravel Projects.