Ayumi Paul

Ayumi Paul is an artist, violinist and composer who explores the interdependency of phenomena through listening and engaging with the nonlinearity of time.

Trained as a classical violinist since the age of five, Paul’s interdisciplinary approach to exploring how sound influences perception dismantles limitations of what we see and how we relate to one another. Her distinctive artistic language incorporates materials such as paper, thread and sound recordings, integrating invisible layers of reality like vibration and imagination as spaces for communal creation. Although she works closely with scientific technologies, she consistently returns to the body and its inherent ways of sensing beyond rational comprehension. Her projects often manifest as new languages, rituals and heightened sensitivities, which can be immediately applied to everyday life.

Ayumi Paul’s work has recently been exhibited at the National Gallery Singapore (2018 and 2021), Kunsthalle Osnabrück (2020), SFMOMA (2021), Auditorium Parco della Musica (2022), haubrok foundation (2023), Gropius Bau (2023) and Georg Kolbe Museum (2024), among others. In 2021, she was awarded a fellowship stipend by the German Academy Villa Massimo in Rome. The Singing Project, a collective practice and singing sculpture, continues to be hosted by the Gropius Bau in Berlin, where she was the Artist in Residence throughout 2022.

To get us in the mood for the summer, Ayumi Paul, as Artist in Residence 2022, has developed a new sound work as the first in a series of sound pieces created in attunement with the solstices and equinoxes of the year. Sounding Seeds is a sonic journey – embedded in breathing and vocal exercises – through the spheres that inspire Ayumi Paul’s The Singing Project. Following the rhythm of the earth’s yearly cycle around the sun, they explore the myriad ways in how sound and song have been shaping our world.