'Audiobook', 2025
detail, 'Audiobook'
detail, 'Audiobook'
detail, 'Audiobook'
Audiobook
Installation, mixed media
Variable dimensions
"Audiobook is a mixed media piece composed of found objects and wiring. Central to the work are a pair of vintage headphones, once used but now made unusable - standing in as representations of my grandfather’s time as a pilot during the Rhodesian War. These headphones have been punctured, written on, erased, and written on again. Through this physical manipulation - both violent and repetitive - I aim to reflect the difficulty my grandfather faced in speaking about his experiences of the war.
Listening is an inherently intimate act - just you and what is being heard. By rendering the headphones inoperable, I intentionally interrupt that act, challenging the possibility of connection and comprehension. Yet, through the writing inscribed on them- layered, fragmented, and overwritten - I attempt to visualise the act of listening, even in its absence. The damaged materials create a sense of rupture: between past and present, memory and loss, Rhodesia and South Africa. These fragments resist a neat historical narrative and instead reflect the porous, complicated relationship between personal memory and broader colonial histories.
In re-writing and recording my grandfather’s recollections, Audiobook becomes a gesture of remembering - a fractured memorial that acknowledges both what is said and what remains unspeakable."
