Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Listen to the World, Volute 2, 2023. Polished cast aluminium, 300 cm

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Listen to the World, Volute 2, 2023. Polished cast aluminium, 300 cm. Gift from Mexico to the people of Canada, on the occasion of the Confederation's Sesquicentennial. Artwork donated by Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo (Mexico City). National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. © Rafael Lozano-Hemmer/Antimodular Research, 1992–2025. Photo: NGC

Thursday, May 8, 2025, 9:30 am — Wednesday, April 1, 2026, 5:00 pm
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Special Installations

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Listen to the World, Volute 2

Thursday, May 8, 2025 — Wednesday, April 1, 2026
9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EDT
National Gallery of Canada
380 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, ON K1N 9N4
Canada

Don’t miss Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s sculpture Listen to the World, Volute 2, now on view in the National Gallery of Canada’s Rotunda.

Created with a laser-tomography scan, this sculpture physically represents the turbulent air released by a human voice uttering the sentence “Listen to the World,” an homage to the influential Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer (1933–2021), known for his revolution-ary concept of the “soundscape.” The work also evokes the tradition of the speech scroll (also called a speech bubble, banderole, phylactery or volute), an illustrative device like those used by Olmec, Mayan, Mixtec and other Pre-Columbian cultures to represent spoken words or song.

 

Presented by the National Gallery of Canada in collaboration with the Embassy of Mexico in Canada and the Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo

Embassy of Mexico in Canada
Fundacion Jumex arte contemporaneo
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

Photo: Harper Reed, courtesy of the artist

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

Mexican-Canadian media artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer creates platforms for public participation by using robotic lights, digital fountains, computerized surveillance, and telematic networks. Inspired by phantasmagoria, carnival, and animatronics, his interactive works are “anti-monuments for people to self-represent.”

Lozano-Hemmer was the first artist to represent Mexico at the 2007 Venice Biennale. His works are in collections around the world such as MoMA, Guggenheim, TATE, Reina Sofía, and Hirshhorn. Recent exhibitions include “Unstable Presence,” a mid-career retrospective co-produced by the MAC de Montreal and SFMOMA; “Common Measures,” his first solo exhibition at PACE Gallery; and “Translation Island,” a 2-km parcours in Abu Dhabi.

  Learn more about Lozano-Hemmer's practice in the Magazine article Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: The art of making the ephemeral tangible