Shhh #12, 2012

In Shhh #12, noise-canceling instrument cables are attached to the gallery wall with endpin jacks. Jones frequently uses what she describes as “the physical residue of music”—strips of audiotape, bits of wire, instrument cables, cassette casings, or earbuds—to make her work. Her sculptures summon the most significant movements of 20th-century sculpture, from readymades consisting of found, commercial objects, to modernist “drawings in space” and reductive minimalist compositions. They also explore the legacy of African American experimental jazz music. The negative space delineated by the loops of Shhh #12 suggests acts of listening and silence. In this way, Jones allows for concentrated consideration of the relationship between sound, space, memory, and absence, with particular regard to the absence of black artists from the history of modern art.