Makeshift Memorials, Small Revolutions at the Blaffer Art Museum featured a new commission of Indira Allegra titled May the Hope of My Heart Be Woven into the Waters (2024). With Houston-based collaborators, cellist Austin Lewellen, artist and engineer Corey De’Juan Sherrard Jr., and fabrication studio Moon Papas, Allegra transformed the open space of the museum stairwell into a contemporary theremin, each stair offering a unique sound from harp-like plucking to the droning resonance of a cello.

Through live sessions, a duet of Lewellen’s cello and Allegra’s movement-trigger sounds, as the artist transports the audience’s prayers through reed wands from the bottom of the stairs to the water fountain at the top. As an offering that weaves the senses of touch and hearing into a collective intimacy, memory, and grief, museum visitors’ movements generate their own score throughout the span of the exhibition. During the course of the concurrent exhibition at KADIST San Francisco, the sound recording of the first live session is broadcast at the entrance beginning in November 2024, providing a link between the two exhibition venues.