Sofie Birch & Antonina Nowacka

Picasso: Untitled is a project of La Casa Encendida and the Almine and Bernard Ruiz-Picasso Foundation (FABA) curated by Eva Franch i Gilabert. The exhibition has the support of the National Commission for the Commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the death of Pablo Picasso, and the collaboration of the Community of Madrid. The exhibition is part of the official program of the Picasso Celebration 1973-2023, with Telefónica as a collaborating company in Spain.

Picasso. Untitled / With Music exposes Picasso to a multiplicity of voices that overflow the exhibition hall and suggest a multidisciplinary re-reading of the artist and his work. This collaboration is a “musical score” proposal for the event, with Birch’s ambient creations alongside Nowacka’s vocal melodies in a meditative sound show that opens a small portal to another world and reveals some mysteries from the threshold of reverie.

Danish sound artist Sofie Birch and Polish experimental singer Antonina Nowacka met for the first time at the 2021 Ephemera Festival, where they staged an impromptu performance as part of the all-night ambient concert Infinity O’Clock. They connected deeply from the start: it was a meeting of kindred spirits, which led to a second collaboration at that year’s Unsound Festival. Afterwards, the two artists got together again in Copenhagen to record Languoria. Fusing the delicately melodic tones of Birch’s sonic practice and Nowacka’s abstract, spiritual vocalisations, the album alludes to the wonders of the natural world while looking inward.

Sofie Birch is a sound artist and producer known for her ambient music and her soundtracks for animation films and art installations. Her works include Planetes, launched in 2019 on the Siel label; Repair Techniques, which she released together with Johan Carøe on STROOM; and her latest, highly acclaimed album, Holotropica. She has a deep interest in the healing nature of sound and vibrations and works across disciplines with other artists to expand our understanding of the mind and body through art.

Experimental vocalist Antonina Nowacka released Lamunan in 2020, inspired by the time she spent singing alone in a cave on the island of Java. When she returned to Poland, she tried to capture a similar mood in the Modlin Fortress, a cave-like structure near Warsaw. Drawing inspiration from ancient choral music, traditional Indonesian sounds and modern minimalism, Lamunan approaches the work of artists like Grouper and Meredith Monk. Nowacka then travelled to Oaxaca in Mexico, where she recorded vocals in a remote church, against a background sound of motorbikes, trucks and local animals. The result was Vocal Sketches from Oaxaca.