Sonic Cradles gathers the voices of Tarisai Ngangura, Ben Okri, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Eloghosa Osunde, Aaliyah Bilal, Tembe Denton-Hurst, and Briana Pickens. This international cohort of authors were invited to write short stories in response to works of art by Turiya Adkins, Diego Velázquez, Noah Davis, Armina Howada Mussa, Naudline Pierre, and Rhea Dillon. (Osunde further expanded this framework by responding to “Fugitive Ritual, Selah” by Immanuel Wilkins, “the healing sound of ocean water at a quiet beach,” and their sophomore novel Necessary Fiction.) To intensify the aura of each story, a cadre of musicians were commissioned to compose scores that act as rhythmic accompaniments to the narratives. Sitting at the convergence of creative disciplines, this reservoir of enchantment carries forth our mission to peel criticism off the page.

By veering away from the traditional forms through which art criticism often appears (the exhibition review, the artist profile, the catalog essay, etc.), Sonic Cradles embodies our belief that fiction can convey the unbridled imaginative potential unleashed by encounters with art. Further, the offerings coalesced here live not only as a disruption of expected formal conventions, but also as an experiment around how art criticism is distributed; as such we collaborated with NTS Radio to transmit this body of work through the airwaves and initiate a series of aural odysseys into the heart of each artwork.