Cindy Islam: The Veil Between Worlds (2024)

The Veil Between Worlds by sound artist Cindy Islam is an audio/visual performance sharing an intimate understanding of the veil and its multiplicities; as a material fabric designated to women but also a symbolic portal between us and alternative perceptions.  

The Veil Between Worlds traverses the textures and sounds where everyday observations intersect with the contemplation of other existences. The veil becomes a cloak flickering through the visible and invisible, a sonic layer between what we experience and what else may exist.  

Cindy Islam is a sound artist and performer inspired by Sufi principles of sound as a divination tool, a way to reconnect to the origins of creation and use listening as an entry point into the unknown. Absent of any musical training, Cindy Islam approaches the decolonisation of sound-making through a celebration of the amateur; collaging and layering synthesised noises, frequencies, field recordings and archival sounds collected from their migrations between Iraq, London and Scotland.  

Commissioned by Scottish Refugee Council for Refugee Festival Scotland 2024

Supported by Common Ground  

Presented at CCA (Glasgow)  

 “The piece takes inspiration from the pensive moments amongst such a tumultuous emotional and bodily experience like displacement and how this tension between connecting with a motherland and at the same time forging a home on new land – can at moments be such a profound and abstract experience”. Cindy Islam

Image credit: Haneen Hadiy