Gust

2025

sculpture, 18 min audio track
Driehaus museum, Chicago, IL

Jefferson Pinder's "Gust." Photo: Courtesy of Bob. (Robert Salazar and Robert Heischman)

Constructed from sourced ceiling and wall tin from working-class neighborhoods in Chicago, Gust is a sound object designed to emerge from the fireplace of a Gilded Age mansion. In combining time-specific materials, Pinder fastens together different histories, juxtaposing decorative fragments of old homes and a solitary bass speaker. The audio creates a trance-like cadence — in a collaged carousel of historical voices, noises and rhythms — that delivers the listener to a space beyond the present. Activating the chimney as a portal to the past, Gust creates a domestic channel to access the experiences and voices that are often silenced in this period of history.