Listening for Love

A small, dimly lit room. Orange satin fabrics hangs from the walls. A ornate sink basin stands against the wall, and a intricate light fitting next to it.

A small, dimly lit room. Orange satin fabrics hangs from the walls, and a planter with foliage in it stands against the back wall. Next to it, there is a plinth with fruit displayed on a platter.

A dark room with walls covered in fabric. There is a long, rectangular projection onto the wall.

the artist stands in front of his visual projections - geometric shapes cascading over and around him obscuring his face

cindy islam written in custom font similar to the arabic calligraphy on a silk material background

black line drawing of a cochlea, with pink and blue gradient background

Listening for Love features the work of two Glasgow-based BIPOC sound artists, Kyalo Searle-Mbullu and Cindy Islam. The two-part exhibition gives space for both artists to explore their individual and intersecting multicultural experiences of sound and listening practices.

Drawing from audio recordings of interviews with people from the same heritage living in Scotland, Listening for Love proposes that listening is a conduit to love and through an embodied sense of hearing we learn. Through the processes of collecting, making, sharing and preserving migration stories through audio archives, the artists (re)connect and (re)create a new space of belonging. This project builds on Listen Gallery’s approaches to listening as a behavioural and attentional shift which moves from the individual to collective, where the audience is invited to listen and listen again to people's lived experiences and celebrate the migratory movement of all peoples.