Dr Thembi Soddell (b.1980) is a sound artist, electroacoustic composer and practice-led researcher whose work draws on their lived experience of trauma and madness to offer audiences intense encounters with the psychological impact of sound and darkness. This work invites audience reflection on mental health in a ways that highlight the fluidity of perception and challenge clinical interpretation.
Their 2018 album Love Songs, which explored the invisible impact of emotional abuse in intimate relationships, is streaming at Self-Titled Magazine and an audio paper discussing the concepts behind its making is on Liquid Architecture’s online journal Disclaimer. They completed their PhD, titled ‘A Dense Mass of Indecipherable Fear: The Experiential (Non)Narration of Trauma and Madness through Acousmatic Sound’ at RMIT University in 2019, and a paper discussing their practice-led research methods has been published in Organised Sound.
Thembi is non-binary, using they/them/theirs pronouns, of European (Polish and Anglo-Celtic) ancestry, born and living on Dja Dja Wurrung Country, ‘Australia’, for which sovereignty was never ceded. Their work has been shown at galleries such as Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), among others.
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