The anthropologist, artist and filmmaker Verena Paravel blends ethnographic, ecological, and philosophical inquiry with cinematic experimentation. Her exhibition at mumok is her first museum presentation; the title, Exuviae, is borrowed from biology.

As part of her large-scale project Cosmofonia, she is creating a film that approaches the lives of animals, plants, and ecosystems with mindfulness—not by adopting their perspective, but by displacing the human as the organizing center of perception and opening toward other rhythms, other presences, other forms of agency.
Exuviae explores the inaudible sounds and voices of the planet: infrasonic vibrations, seismic resonances, interspecies acoustic exchange, and the sonic traces of ecological transformation and survival. These registers exist beyond the threshold of human hearing and remain largely unknown even within scientific circles. Paravel approaches them through experimental sound practices and unconventional image-making, guided by her interest in “seeing with the ears.” Her investigations reject both naive naturalism and the fetishization of technology. Image and sound become instruments of attention and contact rather than illustration—revealing a world in which the boundaries between species, bodies, and environments are porous, and where human and nonhuman presences coexist without hierarchy. 
For many visitors, Exuviae will offer a first encounter with these sounds—an experience that transforms not only how we hear the natural world but also how we understand our place within it.
Verena Paravel (born 1971 in Neuchâtel, Switzerland) lives and works in Paris. 

Curated by Fatima Hellberg, Lukas Flygare and Naoko Kaltschmidt

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