The soil hums ultra sound is a group sound art exhibition unearthing resonant stories of migration, belonging, and love. Three installations by artists Aliyah Hussain, Jessica El Mal and Paul Nataraj collate an invitation to listen beneath the surface, where memories of displacement, symbols of resilience, and the blossoms of friendship take root.

This is the inaugural exhibition of Quiet Time Arts, a new organisation bringing accessible sound art and experimental music to community spaces, curated by Brit Seaton.

The exhibition will also provide a gathering space for a Listening Event with Paul Nataraj and Yasmeen Soudani (Sat 21 Nov, 7-9pm) and a Poetry Brunch hosted by Jessica El Mal and Brit Seaton (Sun 22 Nov, 11:30am-1:30pm), as part of a special public programme.

✶ Tickets for Listening Event and Poetry Brunch here ✶

Aliyah Hussain’s Jal Tarang / Waves in Water is an interactive and sculptural reinterpretation of the classical Indian instrument of water-filled porcelain bowls. The work considers ecological fragility and a personal history of displacement and loss: the artist’s ancestral village of Siakh in Pakistan was submerged in the 1960s by the construction of the Mangla Dam, and now, living in an active flood zone in Todmorden, she experiences her own physical connection to the threat of water.

Hussain’s clay bowls contain the outline of a submerged village and sculptural forms of floodplain grasses – ephemeral, regenerative species used in natural flood management, which her research has opened up as a symbolic language of resilience and impermanence. A water-filled bowl connected with a hydrophone and contact mics can be played to accompany a soundscape weaving together Floodline data, field recordings, and Jal Tarang bowls being sounded. The water that sings in the bowls becomes a portal for time travel between submerged ancestral landscapes and present-day flood zones.

We Sound Each Other is a mixed media, multi-channel sound installation created by Paul Nataraj in collaboration with Sangini, a Black and minorities women led community arts project in South Shields, and the Mira Intercultural Community Group in Budapest. Developed during artist residencies for the ‘Contested Desires: Constructive Dialogues’ project in Hungary and the UK, the work combines collaborative spoken word pieces with ethnographic interviews, political speeches, field recordings, found sound and AI-generated voices.

Bringing together stories and testimonies from community participants, the installation explores the contemporary legacies of imperialism and colonialism, to consider how this sounds in the present moment. The work engages with the memories of migration, hidden stories and notions of belonging, as well as the tensions between division and solidarity. These themes are also present in the accompanying series of works on goat leather created in collaboration with Sangini, including ‘The Ballad of the Scapegoat’ which considers the lived experience of being a ‘scapegoat’ in relation to harmful narratives around migrant communities.

Our Dreams of Jasmine by Jessica El Mal, presented as an installation for the first time, evolves from a multilingual publication and sound work created in collaboration with multilingual women's group The Colour of Pomegranates in Bootle. Commissioned by At The Library in 2022, the project grew from a series of workshops, conversations and excursions exploring relationships with nature through poetry, music and sound. Together, participants visited Formby Woods and Beach, Ness Botanic Gardens and other shared spaces, collecting stories, photographs and recordings that informed the work.

The project centres on a collection of love poems selected by participants and recorded in their choice of language - predominantly English, Arabic and Persian - reflecting the richness and complexity of love across languages and cultures. The resulting installation brings together spoken word, poetry and sound recordings to create a collective meditation on migration, memory, friendship, longing and belonging, offering an intimate reflection on home, landscape, and connection across borders and generations.