SUPA_System is a sonic sculpture and public infrastructure by Joseph Zeal-Henry (2024, Loeb/ArtLab Fellow) with Deborah Garcia. As spatial practitioners and designers, they explore music and sound as materials for constructing physical spaces. Built at an outsized architectural scale, SUPA_System asks what music and sound can tell us about how we occupy spaces of power. This sound system, scaled to the human body, aims to inspire new ways of thinking about communal gathering spaces. It is adorned in indigo, a plant massively extracted from India and West Africa during the slave trade — but associated with protection and health in pre-colonial times. SUPA_System is a testament to the transformative potential of sonic social culture.
After the initial launch at ArtsThursdays Open Studio, ArtLab will host small, themed listening sessions around SUPA_System. Sound facilitators include James McNally, Nasir Jones Hip Hop Fellow at the Hutchins Center, and Tania Bruguera, an artist and Harvard faculty member in Theater, Dance, and Media. This public artwork, curated by Bree Edwards for ArtLab and commissioned by the Harvard University Committee on the Arts (HUCA), was made possible with the Johnson-Kulukundis Family President’s Fund for Arts at Harvard University. The Loeb Fellowship and the Graduate School of Design provided additional support.
This project is part of Joseph Zeal-Henry’s Loeb/ArtLab fellowship.