Theme Guides Upcoming CTHQ Programs & Public Art Commissions,
Curated by Diya Vij
 
Creative Time is pleased to announce its inaugural annual curatorial theme, Sonic Commons, guiding the organization’s programs and public art commissions for 2025. Under the curatorial direction of Diya Vij, Sonic Commons looks at the texture of sounds (and silences) that form the urban landscape across workshops, performances, and gatherings at CTHQ in addition to two major commissions by Chloë Bass and Hajra Waheed. The first public program will take place on January 22, 2025 at CTHQ, Creative Time’s gathering space for art and political engagement.
 
Amid rising political unpredictability, Creative Time’s 2025 programming takes on the idea of a “sonic commons”—the auditory environment we all exist within—and examines how sound can be used as a tool for understanding community, power, and care. Sound shapes everything with its invisible hand and exists everywhere, even in our perceived silences; perhaps no city is sonically richer or more apt for examination than New York City, which not-coincidentally has a storied history of sound art contribution.
 
Sonic Commons presents weekly public programs and artist-led engagements at CTHQ, organized around a growing list of sonic fragments found in public space, such as the heels click-clacking on the street, the protest slogan, the small talk, or the call to prayer. Acting as starting points, these found sonic fragments—such a part of our daily lives so as to be rendered background noise—are to be considered, investigated, even interrogated, at gatherings hosted by Creative Time. The preliminary CTHQ programming schedule through March, which includes workshops, reading groups, performances, and more, can be found below and here.
 
Participants in the 2025 Sonic Commons CTHQ program currently include: Accent Sisters; Lawrence Abu Hamdan; Safira Beradda; Gabo Camnitzer; Raven Chacon; Maia Chao; Sonia Louise Davis; Iskandar Dridi; JJJJJerome Ellis; Atheel Elmalik & Marwa Eltahir; GENG PTP; Joy Guidry; Lisa E. Harris; Dorchel Haqq; Harmony Holiday; Khaled Jarrar; Jessica Kwok; Edi Kwon & Holland Andrews; Cara Michell (slowpractice); Carlos Motta; Music Research Strategies (Marshall Trammell); Aki Onda; Laura Ortman; Ethan Philbrick; Samora Pinderhughes (The Healing Project); Shirine Saad; Mohammed Salah; Kamala Sankaram; Robert Sember (Ultra-red); Tiffany Sia; H. Sinno; Sonic Insurgency Research Group; Alber Tablaji; Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste; C. Spencer Yeh; and Constantina Zavitsanos.

Wednesday, January 22 | 6–8pm
Disorderly Noise: Kicking Off a Year of the Sonic Commons
With Cara Michell (slowpractice), Sonic Insurgency Research Group & Robert Sember (Ultra-red)
 
Wednesday, January 29 | 6–8pm
Pomegranate, a Collective Song
With Khaled Jarrar, Safira Beradda, Mohammed Salah, Alber Tablaji, Iskandar Dridi & H. Sinno
 
Thursday, January 30 | 6–8pm
The Coded Language: QueerWordPlay
With Carlos Motta, Pete Sigal, Noelle Deleon & Rebecca Teich
 

 
Wednesday, February 5 | 6–7:30pm
Monthly Reiki Meditation with Jennelle Ramdeen
 
Wednesday, February 12 | 6–8pm
Noise Session
Organized by Shirine Saad, with Yuniya Edi Kwon & Holland Andrews
 
Thursday, February 13 | 6–8pm
With Lawrence Abu Hamdan
 
Wednesday, February 19 | 6–8pm
Noise Session
Organized by Shirine Saad, with Joy Guidry, Dorchel Haqq & Lisa E.Harris
 
Wednesday, February 26 | 6–8pm
The Censored Voices: the notion that voices are heard (but is the hearing ever translated into action?)
With Samora Pinderhughes (The Healing Project)
 

 
Wednesday, March 12 | 6–8pm
Noise Session
Organized by Shirine Saad, with Laura Ortman
 
Thursday, March 20 | 6–8pm
The Scream and The Silence
With Harmony Holiday, Raven Chacon & JJJJJerome Ellis
 

Chloë Bass (b. 1984, New York, NY) is a multiform conceptual artist working in performance, situation, conversation, publication, and installation. Her work uses daily life as a site of deep research to address scales of intimacy: where patterns hold and break as group sizes expand. She began her work with a focus on the individual (The Bureau of Self-Recognition, 2011–13), followed by a study of pairs (The Book of Everyday Instruction, 2015–17), and recently concluded an investigation at the scale of the immediate family (Obligation To Others Holds Me in My Place, 2018–24). She will continue to scale up gradually until she’s working at the scale of the metropolis. She is currently working on Since feeling is first (2023–ongoing), a series of works examining intimacy at the scale of the courtroom and the law.
 
Chloë has held numerous fellowships and residencies: most recently, the 2022–24 Kupferberg Arts Incubator fellowship, a 2022–23 Silver Art Project residency, the 2022 Future Imagination Fund Fellowship at NYU Tisch College of the Arts, a 2020–22 Faculty Fellowship for the Seminar in Public Engagement at the Center for Humanities (CUNY Graduate Center), and a 2020–22 Lucas Art Fellowship at Montalvo Art Center. Her work has been supported by the MAP Fund, VIA Art Fund, Art Matters, and the Mellon Foundation, among others. Her projects have appeared nationally and internationally, including recent exhibits at the Buffalo AKG, Ford Foundation Gallery, Skirball Cultural Center, California African-American Museum / Art + Practice, Henry Art Gallery, The Pulitzer Arts Foundation, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Mass MoCA, Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven, BAK basis voor actuele kunst, the Knockdown Center, the Kitchen, the Brooklyn Museum, and elsewhere. Reviews, mentions of, and interviews about her work have appeared in The New York Times, Artforum, The L.A. Times, The Seattle Times, Time Magazine, Forbes, Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, BOMB, Temporary Art Review, Artnews and more. She is an Associate Professor of Art at Queens College, CUNY, where she co-runs Social Practice CUNY with Gregory Sholette, with whom she published the book Art and Social Action. She is represented by Alexander Gray Associates.
 

 
Hajra Waheed’s sprawling multidisciplinary practice (ranging from painting and drawing to video, sound, sculpture and installation), explores the vicissitudes of violence and injustice with a uniquely poetic approach and engagement with the world. Weaving between the intimate and infinite constellations of the communities she is a part of, her works—while rooted in the historical—are at once transgressive of history, consistently imagining new possibilities towards a radically collective and borderless future. Recent exhibitions worldwide include: IMMA, Dublin (2024); Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Delhi (2024); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2024); San Jose Museum of Art, California (2024); Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2023); Sharjah Biennial 15 (2023); State of Concept, Athens (2023); CAM St. Louis, Missouri (2023); PHI Foundation, Montreal (2021); Portikus, Frankfurt (2020); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2020); Lahore Biennial 02, Pakistan (2020); British Museum, London (2019); The Power Plant, Toronto (2019); 57th Venice Biennale, Venice (2017); 11th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2016); BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK (2016); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2015); La Biennale de Montréal, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Quebec (2014); Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, NY (2012) and Antoni Tapies Foundation, Barcelona, ES (2012). She was recipient of the Sharjah Biennial 15 Prize (2023), Hnatyshyn Foundation Award (2022), Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award (2014) for outstanding achievement as a mid-career artist, and a finalist for the Sobey Art Award (2016). Waheed’s works can be found in permanent collections, including: MOMA, New York; British Museum, London; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Art Institute of Chicago; Burger Collection, Zurich/Hong Kong and Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi. She currently lives and works between Yogyakarta and Montreal.