Unravelling / Desenredando is a multichannel bilingual sound installation (Spanish and English) featuring the voices of nine Colombian women from varied backgrounds, listening to and resonating with each others’ stories of their migratory journeys to Europe. This project is a collaboration with the Colombian, UK-based, sound artist and researcher Ximena Alarcón-Díaz.

Improvising in trios, these nine women weave a multilayered sonic memory of intense and intimate listening, while sounding their experiences of how migration and conflict are heard through their bodies: their social spaces of interaction, the memory of conflict in their native land, and the challenges met in the countries where they now live. The installation invites audiences to be immersed in these women’s individual experiences and find resonances in the overlaps and synchronicities, as they might also meet across universal narratives between gender, conflict and migration.

The work leading up to Unravelling was started in 2018 in Oslo and was realised in its present form thanks to a sound artist residency funded by the Immersive Audio Network in Bath/Bristol, UK. The installation was premiered at Arnolfini Arts in Bristol, UK in March 2024, and presented at Festival Internacional de la Imagen in Bogóta, Colombia in May 2024.

Unravelling was funded by The Four Nations Fund (Arts councils England, Wales, Scotland Northern Ireland) and is supported by MyWorld, Bristol, UK.