Interested in language, sound and the afterlife of obsolete technologies, Tania Candiani has created devices that translate images, shapes, and words into sounds and music by repurposing looms, keyboards, typewriters and other old mechanical devices to create wind, chord or percussion instruments. She sees these objects as interfaces between “the soul of the machine” and other types of sensibilities, including those of humans and animals, and often references ancestral knowledges and stories.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Tania Candiani lives and works in Mexico City. One of the central interests of her work is the expanded idea of translation, extended to the experimental field through the use of visual, sound, textual and symbolic languages. Many of her projects consider the universe of sound and the politics of listening as a tool capable of expanding and transforming perceptions, both human and non-human. A fundamental part of her work is related to feminist policies and practices, understanding them as a communal, affective and ritual experience. Its production usually involves interdisciplinary work groups in various fields, consolidating intersections between art, literature, music, architecture, science, and labor, with an emphasis on ancestral knowledge and techniques, technologies, and their history in the production of knowledge.

She is a member of the National System of Art Creators of Mexico; she is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in the Arts, the Smithsonian Institution Research Grant for Artists; she is an artist-in-residence at the Arts at CERN program, in Geneva, Switzerland. In 2015 she represented Mexico at the 56th Venice Biennale. Her work has been exhibited internationally in museums, institutions and independent spaces, and is part of important public and private collections.