Making the Room Sing.
Making the Room Sing was an 8-month Brent Biennial 2022 project by Amanda Camenisch and Therese Westin with women from the Asian Women Resource Centre, using sound, weaving, and storytelling for empowerment and healing.
Making the Room Sing
In 2022, artists Amanda Camenisch and Therese Westin were commissioned by curator Eliel Jones for the Brent Biennial to lead a long-term participatory project with women from the Asian Women’s Resource Centre, a secure facility in Brent. Over eight months, from June 2022 to January 2023, the group explored sound, ritual, and co-creation as tools for empowerment, healing, and collective expression.
A central element of the project was the creation of four looms, which gradually transformed into elemental harps. The women began by weaving textiles that carried their stories, dreams, and images emerging from guided meditations, writing, and drawing. The woven strips, made from silks hand-dyed with natural pigments during workshops, came together as a communal tapestry, a shared garden of collective imagination. Many pieces were accompanied by poems, reflections, and illustrations, later gathered into a book and sewn into the back of the wall piece.
As the looms evolved into harps, sound entered the work. Each harp embodied one of the four elements, Earth, Water, Air, and Fire and was shaped to resonate both with the body and the surrounding space. Drawing on ancient tuning systems, the instruments were built for direct body contact, their vibrations travelling through the player to unwind energetic pathways and awaken subtle processes of transformation. Placed in the four cardinal directions, the harps became elemental guardians, grounding the space for collective practice. A bespoke sound-healing bench, designed by Amanda, allowed participants to rest and experience sound vibrations throughout the body.
Alongside these, Therese created robes from hand-dyed silks, padded with wool, infused with dried lavender, and adorned with handmade clay bells, some made in collaboration with the women. These garments were worn in live performances and meditation sessions, carrying the sensory and symbolic depth of the project.
Over the course of the year, the women became confident sound practitioners, continuing to perform and create alongside Amanda and Therese in projects such as Lyra.
Take a look at the book in collaboration with the women here.
Read more about the process of building the bespoke harps and their tuning system here.
Read a response by artist and curator Stella Sidelli here.
Workshops at Metroland
As part of Making the Room Sing, Amanda Camenisch and Therese Westin facilitated a series of public workshops at Metroland Gallery.
Together with participants and members of the public, they explored sound as a form of collaborative meditation, healing, and collective care.
Using elemental instruments representing earth, water, air, and fire, the workshops invited participants to create soundscapes that wove together human and more-than-human voices, fostering alchemical encounters between people, place, and environment.
These communal explorations became spaces of mutual care, where political and spiritual conversations could unfold through the shared act of listening and sounding together
