“WATER TALES”

Portheads and Riverbeds

© Heinrich Holtgreve

Ausstellungsraum Klingental, Basel (CH)

2026

Portheads and Riverbeds connects local communities and international perspectives to highlight Basel’s role as a hub of trade and culture. The project brings together artists from Switzerland, Germany, England, and Sweden to explore the history of Basel’s harbor and its current situation. The project began in May 2025 with a workshop consisting of city walks and artist talks and is being developed into an exhibition format. In dialogue with port workers, activists, and artists, an exchange emerges about the social and economic repurposing of the harbor areas. Portheads and Riverbeds invites visitors and participants to reflect on their relationship to land and water, local identities, and global movements.

Curated by: Giulia Busetti, Gabriel N. Gee, Cora Piantoni, and TETI Group.

“CARAMBAS Y GÜIRAS”

Make the Conditions Dance: 50 Years of Kemnade International

© Heinrich Holtgreve

Kunstmuseum Bochum, Bochum (DE)

2024

“In the summer of 2024, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of an experiment: in 1974, the Bochum Art Museum launched Kemnade International, a festival that focused not only on music and art, literature, and dance, but also on networking and shared knowledge. It became an outstanding example of the rich culture of our region, a culture that has long been shaped by migration. What remains of that utopia? What stories still need to be told, what dances still need to be danced? Together with artists from different generations and former festival participants, we have looked from the present into the living history of the festival.

Our large exhibition space becomes a platform of multi-voiced sounds and memories, offering suggestions for a new way of living together and a critical view of the present. How can a dialogue between generations succeed, and what does solidarity mean today? And how much festival can fit into a museum space? Following the logic of a festival ground, things happen here simultaneously and collectively. With playable instruments, installations, film, and archival materials, the exhibition is an invitation to come together again and, even today, make the circumstances dance once more.”

“LITORAL”

Pavel Aguilar Solo Show at El Lobi.

Curated by Vanessa Hernádez Gracia

© Thais Llorca

San Juan (PR)

2024

“Litoral delves into the exploration of our sonic habitat as a central axis, deepening the relationship between sound and the environment in different geographical scenarios. From landlocked nations like Switzerland to territories surrounded by water like Puerto Rico, it examines the ways in which sound shapes the experience and perception of habitable space.

Through sensory stimuli, field recordings, and audiovisual narratives, spectators are led to reflect on how sound influences and conditions our living environment.”

“THE GOLDEN RHYTHM”

HERE AND NOW. Anti-colonial Interventions

Museum Ludwig (DE)

2022

“Donkey jawbones, such as the three gilded specimens in the work of Pavel Aguilar, have different meanings in various cultures. In some regions of Latin America and the Caribbean, for instance, quijadas are used as musical instruments: sounds are created by moving a wooden stick or plastic tube up and down or across the row of teeth.

Quijadas were also played in Africa and became firmly rooted in Afro-American culture through the colonial slave trade.

By contrast, the jawbone is associated in Christian tradition with Samson, who used the tool to slay 4,000 Philistines and liberate Israel. Cai Guo-Qiang’s installation The Age of Not Believing in God (1999), which is on display close to Aguilar’s work, features ten wooden sculptures that depict beings venerated in Christianity and Taoism, here pierced by 1,500 arrows.

While Cai is referring to the growing instability of religion in society today, Aguilar deals with the misappropriation of cultural objects, which, when displayed in a museum, are not allowed to be touched. A further connection to Christian iconography and colonialism is provided by the gilding of the teeth: one of the aims of colonial powers was to exploit land and people for the purpose of accumulating riches, especially gold, which was also used to decorate and furnish Catholic churches. This exploitation continues to this day.”

Joanne Rodríguez and Víctor Zaiden.

“FUGA”

Picture a Vaccum!- Kunstkredit Basel-Stadt

Group Show. Curated by Eva-Maria Knüesel

Kunsthalle Basel (CH)


2021

FUGA, sound installation,
2020 Ocean Spirit, Performance,

Aguilar, who originally trained as a classical musician, uses an ancient technique from his native Honduras to craft instruments out of seashells.

The loudspeakers in his sound installation FUGA play back recordings of himself breathing and blowing through these instruments.

The bodily intimacy and proximity of the sound evokes associations with wind and waves and makes the roar of the sea an almost palpable experience. Also close to Aguilar’s heart are the endangered coasts, oceans, and indigenous peoples of Honduras.

Conch trumpets were widely used among the native peoples of America and still serve the Garifunas, an African-indigenous ethnic group on the Caribbean coast, as a musical instrument and means of communication today.

The installation thus symbolizes the culture that in 1800 was driven off the island of St. Vincent and scattered to the four winds and its ancient spiritual ties to the sea.

Pável Aguilar, b. 1989, lives and works in Basel