Accompanying the 2022 exhibition at CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco, Drum Listens to Heart reflects on the many ways that percussion reaches far beyond the drum. It relates to music and rhythm, but it also speaks to a wide range of aesthetic, expressive, and political forms more broadly. The exhibition weaves different forms of percussion together—physical and socio-political, literal and metaphorical. It juxtaposes instances of impact and vibration with forms of control, emancipation, spirituality, and community-building. It offers a framework and a vocabulary that binds art and politics to each other in percussive ways.

Alongside documentation of works in the exhibition are essays by Wattis Institute Director Anthony Huberman and Diego Villalobos as well as a unique glossary of terms associated with percussion, with contributions by Hannah Black, Geeta Dayal, JJJJJerome Ellis, Anthony Elms and Hamza Walker, Natasha Ginwala, Will Holder, Lê Quan Ninh, and Hypatia Vourloumis.

Artists in the exhibition include Francis Alÿs, Luke Anguhadluq, Marcos Ávila Forero, Raven Chacon, Trisha Donnelly, Em’kal Eyongakpa, Theaster Gates, Milford Graves, David Hammons, Susan Howe & David Grubbs, NIC Kay, Barry Le Va, Rose Lowder, Lee Lozano, Guadalupe Maravilla, Harold Mendez, Rie Nakajima, The Otolith Group, Lucy Raven, Davina Semo, Michael E. Smith, Consuelo Tupper Hernández, Haegue Yang, and David Zink Yi.