Notes from Below brings together the works of artists whose research, poetics, and discursive practices are attuned to sounding out and listening in. The work of Gilles Aubry, Keli Safia Maksud, Sara Ouhaddou, and Simnikiwe Buhlungu are thought of as creative notes that search beyond the surface – of inscription (cultural, sociological and technological) to creatively interrogate, recover and imagine traditions, practices and knowledge. The artworks here are thought of as inscriptive notes, whose arrangement create a composition of ideas and perspectives within the exhibition space.


The exhibition is an attempt to tender an approach to considering notes (account, notation, inscription, reminders) as creative impressions that are in process of becoming, that are being read.  Notes also refers to (graphic) scores, musical notations and instruction as creative forms that propel knowledge and action into the future. These notes are coupled with an understanding of below as that which is beneath – the quiet, inaudible yet present.


Each of these artists are guided by processes of translation, encoding and transcription, and demonstrate how inherited forms and traditions inform lineages, yet are unstable and open to change and adaptation. Their works demonstrate a myriad of approaches to how history, memory and knowledge can be cast across generations and geographies. From ancestral methods of care and manufacture, language as a mutable form, gestural communication of bees, to graphic notations and scores for the casting and transfer of practices, Notes from Below asks for us to look and listen closer to the cultural and epistemic transfers that occur on micro and macro levels, personal and communal spaces.