When art makes noise: Timsam Harding brings urban sound to La Térmica

Vallecas is a city where noise never sleeps. The M-30. Millions of cars per day. The industrial workshops are on the opposite side of the building. The music of the discotheque keeps you awake until midnight. The rustling oleanders leaves are a plant which can sometimes isolate the noise and at other times re-echo it like a metallic echoe. This soundscape – routine, persistent, almost intimate – is what the Malaga artist Timsam Harding has brought to La Térmica in A Tiempo Para La Espera (In Time for the Wait), an installation that can be visited on the first floor until 1 March 2026.

“The old corridor turns into a space for stopping”. The artist presents a photographic composition, five listening islands and stainless steel cubic structures which house low-frequency Subwoofers. These waves are then transmitted to sculptures made of cast aluminium oleander leaf leaves suspended on metal surfaces. Each piece is a sound system that deforms the sound as it passes through metal.

The ensemble creates an environment where the everyday is transformed into tactile material – whether it’s the rain, the opening of a gate or muffled voices. They are sound sculptures which transform urban noises into physical experiences. An invitation to stop and listen in a different way to what surrounds us”, said the vice-president of Culture, Manuel López Mestanza, recalling that this exhibition completes an “unprecedented” programme with four simultaneous exhibitions, all of them produced in-house.

Quiet turned into noise

Harding’s ‘Sin Silencio,’ which he developed in 2024 for Genalguacil is the origin of this project. It was there that he was selected for this solo exhibition at La Térmica. “This project is based on the spirit of converting a passing space into a place to stop,” underlined the centre’s director and curator, Antonio Javier López, who added: “It invites us to find a kind of calm in noise. This paradox is at the heart of his work”.

Oleanders are a symbol of this paradox. “Their resin is deeply toxic, but it also protects us from noise,” López explained. The M-30 verges, where the plant is allowed to grow unchecked, are the artist’s everyday geography. You can experience music in a discotheque in a different way than your neighbour, who is listening through a wall. Harding is interested in the way we perceive sound coming from different locations. He records geophones to create living sculptures.

Harding said he would continue to explore his artistic line by combining visual and sound experience as he had done in past projects. Harding’s next stop will be the T20 Gallery. The exact date for the exhibition is not yet known.

A Tiempo Para La Espera transforms urban noise from a background sound into a form intimacy. The visitor, who used to pass through a corridor without looking back, is now able to sit down and listen, discovering that the noise could also be a form of intimacy.