Multi-Sensory Experience on now at the Aga Khan Museum

From January 20th until April 22nd, 2018, experience interactive museum-wide soundscapes and audio-visual installations that showcase the relationship between music, poetry, and the visual arts.

The Aga Khan Museum’s event Listening to Art, Seeing Music will present 10 immersive experiences from miniature paintings in dialogue with the rhythmic musicality of its poetry to a Mongolian Yurt that will house pop-up performances, hearing stories of music-making.

Check out this time-lapse of the Mongolian Yurt being built.

“We were inspired by the success of our 2017 exhibition Syrian Symphony: New Compositions in Sight and Sound, which demonstrated the power of unifying art and music,” says Henry Kim, the Aga Khan Museum’s Director and CEO. “By scaling up that multi-sensory experience so the building itself is transformed, we aim to give visitors a new appreciation of how we truly are a museum like no other.”

Highlights include:

-UK-based geometer Sama Mara and composer Lee Westwood’s interactive multi-media installation, which allows visitors to translate the rhythms and patterns of music into visual art compositions

-An immersive multi-sensory piece by New York-based Pakistani-American artist Shahzia Sikander and Pulitzer Prize-winning Chinese composer Du Yun, which animates motifs from an illustrated manuscript of the Gulshan-I ‘Ishq (Rose Garden of Love) against Du Yun’s soundscape

-Miniature paintings from the Persian Book of Kings (Shahnameh) in dialogue with the rhythmic musicality of its poetry

-A collection of ouds (Arab lutes) belonging to Syrian oud player Radwan Al Taleb, a recent newcomer to Canada

-A Mongolian yurt, handmade from felt and wood and painted with traditional motifs, which provides a warm communal gathering space for experiencing pop-up performances, hearing stories of music-making, and sharing a cup of tea

“The Aga Khan Museum recognizes the importance of highlighting both the material and intangible achievements of world artists,” Amirali Alibhai, Head of Performing Arts at the AgaKhan Museum, explains. “We hope that with Listening to Art, Seeing Music, visitors will come to better appreciate the connection between all the arts — food, music, paintings, digital art, experiences, spoken word, and dance.”

 

For more information, and to buy tickets, please visit the Aga Khan Museum website.

 

 

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