About

Mia Thom (b.1995) is a Cape Town based, interdisciplinary artist. In 2017, she graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Art (UCT) with a BAFA (Hons) with distinction. She has taken part in several group exhibition and festivals, most notably the Dakar Biennale (19 May-21 June 2022). This month her work is included in group exhibition “The Invisible Thread,” curated by Swain Hoogervorst at the AVA Gallery, CPT.

Her work is informed by researchers who recognise the ways in which sound can alter the perspectives we hold of objects, spaces and experiences. Thom’s practice, which explores a relationship between photography, performance, music and sound, delves into experiences of speculative realism – a philosophical way of thinking that does not rely on only one framework for reality. It attempts to make us “think beyond the limits of what we, as human beings, were long considered able to think, speculating instead about the nature of the non-human and what such thinking might provide for the many issues we face in our contemporary moment” (Beier & Wallen, 2017:149). Thom’s interest in the voice reflects ethical, poetic and psychological concerns.

Thom proposes an ethical listening, to voices and bodies, human and nonhuman. To perceive space and site through its sonic possibilities and engage with visual mediums through practices of sound-making or listening (Voegelin, 2014). 

Thom also works as a photographer documenting artwork and exhibitions. She is currently completing an undergraduate degree in Psychology (UCT). Her studio is situated at Side Street Studios, Woodstock.

References:

Jessie Beier and Jason Walden. 2017. “Sound without Organs: Inhuman Refrains and the Speculative Potential of a Cosmos-Without-Us” in Sonic Thinking: A Media Philosophical Approach. (ed.) Bernd Herzogenrath. Bloomsbury Academic: New York. 135-158 

Brandon Labelle. 2018. Sonic Agency: Sound and Emergent Forms of Resistance. MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

Salome Voegelin. 2014. Sonic Possible Worlds: Hearing the Continuum of Sound. Bloomsbury: London.