INSTALLATION
Yearning to Be Heard- Listening Hollows
Ashley Hope Carlisle
Recycled and gifted materials, steel, paper, fabric, pigment, sound
2026
These forms emerge from the wall like ancient organs, part geological aperture, part biological resonator. In science, a hollow is an acoustic chamber, a space where pressure gathers, and sound transforms. In ecology, a hollow is a shelter, a refuge carved over time. In anatomy, a hollow is often a place of breath, a cavity that shapes voice.
These Listening Hollows sit somewhere between all three. They behave like the earth’s earliest instruments, fossilized throats, pollen funnels, root-breathing membranes. Their interiors act as resonance chambers, amplifying murmurs too low for the human ear. Their skins carry the textures of sediment and handmade fiber, recalling both natural erosion and the quiet labor of caretaking.
In this installation, the viewer becomes part of the acoustic ecology. As you approach, the hollows seem to listen back. As you breathe, the chambers breathe with you. You are not only hearing the installation, but you are also completing it, entering a feedback loop between human attention and environmental longing. These hollows gather the question the earth has been asking for centuries: Will you listen long enough to hear me?
All of the voices heard within this installation are female. Women I adore speak for the earth, not as translators, but as conduits, carrying a lineage of care, labor, endurance, and attention that has long gone unrecognized. Their voices do not perform the environment; they allow it to speak. Materials that have been gifted—gathered, shared, and transformed—shape the cones into instruments of listening rather than declaration. Yearning to Be Heard asks us to stay, to listen closely, and to consider what responsibility follows attention.