Migrant Workers: Seen and Heard.
Mona Chalabi and Emmy the Great.

Installation exhibited at Tai Kwun museum as part of British Council’s SPARK Festival: The Science of Creativity. Hong Kong, January 2019.

How do you make data visualisations that are accessible to the sight impaired? Most of the time, numbers are seen and not heard. This installation changes that. It’s a collaboration between singer Emmy The Great and visual journalist Mona Chalabi, where data is made visible and audible. 

The idea was borne of Mona's long-term goal to make her data visualisations available to the visually impaired. In the spirit of SPARK's celebration of creativity, the relevant data will focus on what the artists consider to be Hong Kong’s most creative community - the city’s migrant domestic workers. Using sound collected from interviews with domestic workers in Hong Kong, the pair will illustrate numbers with their voices. They hope to pay tribute to this most resilient of communities, as well as exploring how to make art that is accessible to all.

The installation showed at Hong Kong’s Tai Kwun museum as part of British Council’s SPARK Festival: The Science of Creativity. On the final day of the installation, Mona led a workshop with sight and hearing impaired Hong Kong artists, organised by ADA HK.