Tania Candiani

Ambient sound is all around us, from buzzing insects to airplanes overhead. Our days are filled with noises, yet there is so much more we cannot hear. Animals, for instance, can pick up lower and higher frequencies than humans, and each animal has its own hearing range. In the exhibition “For the Animals,” artist Tania Candiani collaborated with electronic musicians to create experimental musical scores intended as lullabies for the bobcat, Mexican grey wolf, coyote, red fox, javelina, jaguar, kit fox and coati at frequencies audible to each animal. The lullabies were played at the Southwest Wildlife Center in Scottsdale and in the wild at Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge and Picacho Peak State Park in Arizona. These animals are indigenous to our local Sonoran Desert region, which covers 100,000 square miles spanning California, Arizona and most of the states of Sonora and Baja California, Mexico. With this artistic and sonic gesture, Candiani brings awareness to the plight of these animals should a border wall be built to prevent their ancient migration patterns in their native
region.
“For the Animals” tests the physical, environmental and social boundaries between nature and culture by creating artworks that approaches land, animals, technology and sound. The origin of this exhibition began as a conversation in 2015 between ASU Art Museum curator Julio César Morales and Tania Candiani. ASU Art Museum invited her to our International Artist Residency Program where artists are given space and time to create artworks inspired by our region and take advantage of the breadth of resources ASU, the largest public research university in the country has to offer. A trip to Papago Park and its natural rock formation, the Hole in the Rock (just three miles northwest of the museum), served as the initial inspiration for the exhibition. Candiani’s first impression of this geological formation was that it looked like a speaker. She decided to use the Hole in the Rock as a means to communicate with the indigenous animals of the desert. The exhibition includes videos, drawings, ephemera and sculptural sound pieces that will translate the lullabies for the animals into a visual language for our audience.

Julio César Morales. ASU Art Museum Curator.