Translating two very different experience is a risky endeavour but curators Elena Sorokina and Simona Dvorak are attempting that with sound. Orchestrating fourteen contemporary voices the gambit is to create a dimensional unification between ancient Sufi wisdom and present-day artistic inquiry. In Resonant: Bodies, Songs, and Strings, elements such as Nevin Aladağ’s sound installations resonate with the same frequency as centuries-old whirling ceremonies, which echo alongside JJJJJerome Ellis’s explorations of stuttered speech.
Contemporary works and their spiritual precedents are intrinsically linked and then framed within MACS MTO’s unique institutional vision—a space where the decorative borders between sacred and secular dissolve. This heightens the ‘equality’ of all forms of knowledge transmission, whether through Charwei Tsai’s meditative video works or the museum’s rotating selection of Sufi cultural objects. What does this interconnected formalism mean? Are all paths of understanding equal, are they amassed in the gallery space to be appreciated as a whole?
Just as humans unify the world through grand approaches in science and mathematics, perhaps this exhibition’s cross-cultural vision shows art and spirituality doing the same. The fourteen artists—including Rada Akbar, Brook Andrew, Meris Angioletti, and Guadalupe Maravilla—create a constellation where vibration becomes the universal language connecting bodies across time and geography.
Since MACS MTO opened last autumn as the first museum dedicated to Sufi art and culture, this second exhibition continues the institution’s distinctive methodology of placing mystical traditions in direct dialogue with contemporary practice. The result should be both a sensory immersion and introspective journey, where knowledge circulates through sound waves that transcend the boundaries between ancient and now.
Exhibition Details: Resonant: Bodies, Songs, and Strings
6 June 2025 to 4 January 2026
Musée d’Art et de Culture Soufis MTO
6 Av. des Tilleuls, 78400 Chatou, France
Access: 30 minutes from central Paris via RER A to Chatou-Croissy
Hours: Wed–Fri: 11 AM–6 PM | Sat–Sun: 10 AM–6 PM
Admission: 9€ (concessions available)
Curated by Elena Sorokina and Simona Dvorák, with curatorial advisors Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez and the Initiative for Practices and Visions of Radical Care.
Images courtesy of the artist/Flint Culture
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. – Aristotle
