Auricle

Auricle (Pinna nobilis), 2026
Pinna nobilis shell, chrome-plated steel, sound exciters/body shakers, sound, approx. 50 x 20 x 30 cm

Commissioned by Ecological Translation

Nona Inescu’s Auricle (Pinna nobilis) holds a Mediterranean pen shell within a chrome-plated steel, locket-like structure. Once widespread across the Mediterranean seabed, Pinna nobilis is now critically endangered, its decline tied to the pressures of a rapidly changing marine environment.

Inside the shell, a heartbeat resonates through sound exciters. The sound does not project outward but gathers within the cavity of the shell itself, asking the listener to come close and listen to the sounds of the body, both marine and human.

The title points to an anatomical echo: the outer part of the human ear is also called the pinna. Shell and ear begin to mirror one another, as forms that receive, hold, and transmit vibration. Shells have long been held to the ear to evoke the sound of the sea, functioning as a medium with which the sea is accessed, remembered, and experienced on demand. The work invites a form of intimate ecological listening. Here, shell and ear are what one hears, and hears with, rendering porous the distinction between experience of the human body and of the environments in which it takes shape.

text by Asya Yaghmurian