Washwasha—the Arabic word for “whispering”—is the UAE’s exhibition for the 61st International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, the National Pavilion’s ninth participation in the event. Curated by Bana Kattan with assistant curator Tala Nassar, the exhibition brings together newly commissioned and existing works by six artists exploring sound as a lens onto migration, technology, oral history, and identity in the UAE.
Sound isn’t a theme layered onto the exhibition—it’s the organizing architecture. Working with Büro Koray Duman (B–KD) Architects, the exhibition space was designed to guide visitors through a sequence of chambers, moving from zones of close, intimate listening to areas shaped by sonic overlap and layered noise. The spatial narrative tracks the curatorial one: from oral histories and storytelling, through language and communication, and finally into technology and hyper-connectivity.
LSTN provided acoustics and electroacoustics consulting for the pavilion, working with B–KD to translate that narrative into built and sonic reality. Our scope spanned room acoustics treatment to shape each chamber’s distinct listening character, isolation strategies to keep adjacent zones from bleeding into one another, and electroacoustic system design to control how recorded works, narration, and ambient soundscapes are reproduced and layered as visitors move through the space.
