PSW | Kate Howe: Aftermath

Pi Soundworks presents Aftermath, a new installation by Kate Howe created in sonic collaboration with PSW.

Occupying the glass-box project space at the centre of Pi Soundworks, Aftermath unfolds as a suspended environment of fragile translucent membranes, light, movement, and sound. Expanding Howe’s ongoing investigations into embodiment, rupture, memory, and repair, the installation approaches skin as both psychological and architectural threshold — something simultaneously protective, wounded, permeable, and alive.

Constructed through layered paper forms that continuously fold, tear, collapse, and regenerate, the work exists in a state of perpetual becoming. Light presses through the surface while sound moves across and within it, transforming the structure into a resonant body — breathing, trembling, and shifting in real time.

Developed through an ongoing dialogue between Howe and Pi Soundworks, the installation considers the emotional and temporal condition of “aftermath”: the suspended moment that follows rupture yet precedes comprehension. Neither resolution nor recovery, it is approached here as a heightened state of sensory awareness — intimate, disorienting, and strangely tender.

“The sudden, momentary absence of IT … produces a strangely elastic moment — a temporally based sensation clipped to this particular instant. Here, I find you here, in the aftermath.” — Kate Howe, London, 2026 The accompanying sound environment emerges from recordings, resonances, material vibrations, and sonic fragments gathered through the process of making, extending the installation into an immersive spatial composition.

Aftermath forms part of the inaugural programme of Pi Soundworks, the new interdisciplinary gallery founded by Jade Turanlı and Liam Howe exploring the intersections of contemporary art, sound, performance, and spatial practice. Aftermath will remain on view through 4 July 2026.

Kate Howe is an American artist, writer, and researcher based in London. Working across painting, installation, performance, sound, theatre, and social practice, Howe’s work investigates identity, memory, temporality, and systems of knowledge production, often examining the emotional and social architectures surrounding gendered violence, repair, and embodied experience. Howe is currently undertaking a PhD in Practice-led Research at the University of Leeds, researching the socialisation of gendered violence through the museum as mediating structure. They hold an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, an MA in Creative Writing from Kingston University, a BA in Art History from Arizona State University, and an AA in Technical Theatre from Foothill College. Howe is also a 2026 Fellow at the Max Planck Institute. They are the Founding Director and Artist in Residence of RuptureXIBIT, an inclusive artist-run residency and practice incubator in South West London. Recent presentations include the Aspen Art Museum, Hastings Contemporary, Lychee One, Orleans House Gallery, The Crypt St Pancras, and Mile End Art Pavilion.

About PSW: Pi Soundworks (PSW) is an independent project gallery founded by Jade Y. Turanli (founder of Pi Artworks ) and Liam Howe (founder of 90’s acclaimed trip hop band Sneaker Pimps) Operating across exhibition-making, recording, installation, and live performance, PSW explores the intersection of contemporary art and sound through commissions, residencies, and interdisciplinary collaborations. Following its initial launch in Fitzrovia in 2025, PSW now establishes its permanent home at Perseverance Works, Shoreditch.

Notes to Editors:

A full artist text by Kate Howe

Aftermath

Text by Kate Howe, London, May 2026

I’m trying to pin a moment in time. In the strange, extruded, syrupy time that trips, humping up over the snag of the moment and bifurcates, sucking me against it like a fell of branches in a cold mountain creek, pinning me when I thought I was playing. Strung out on what I hoped was possible, dancing on the thin line of what might be liveable, I am awash in the aftermath. There is always a sweetness here, I think this is the quality of the moment. I think the flavor of it might be amber, and upwords and sheeting off of, and fleeting. To me it is like a ripe bruise inside my cheek, blooming into pulsing fullness. Purpling. I savor it, pulling it between my teeth, engorging it, feeling its hot, sore, roundness. The paper opens and transforms from uniform perfection into crumbled chaos, and I, kneeling, a supplicant to this perpetually resurrecting skin, I patch her. Again. My patches have patches. I think of how the light will look, how the skin will change pressed against the glass. I think about the shudder, the majesty this skin, monumental and full of breath, has as it moves. The sounds this skin makes might be a library of sounds from the aftermath. The sudden, momentary absence of IT. (Of what? Of It. Of all of it. Whatever it is.) and this gone-ness, the sudden fucking relief of ITs cessation producing this strangely elastic moment – a temporally based sensation, one that exists clipped to this particular moment, which travels in its own band of chaotic time, revealing itself as a sand bar, the ocean momentarily receding all around. Here., I find you here, in the aftermath. After IT stops, and before the monumentality of the task before us solidifies. I grasp to try to explain why I savor this moment. She nods at me. “I know exactly what you mean.” She says, thousands of miles away through a glowing box in my hand. Silence is flavored with the accent of sweet aftermath. I look at her open face. I look at the time it takes to learn. The distance, in this moment, closes between us. “I’m sorry that you’ve felt it.” I say. I’m sorry that you know what I mean…