Cevdet Erek’s practice emerges at the intersection of sound, rhythm, and spatial experience, in which minimal gestures carry a resonant complexity. With an architect’s sensitivity and a percussionist’s precision, Erek orchestrates installations that subtly reconfigure our awareness of spaces and architectural environments. Through the interplay of seemingly modest visual and sonic elements – such as rulers, skeletal drums, or diagrammatic scores – or near-architectural scale constructions integrated with sound systems, he crafts immersive scenarios where the full body becomes an instrument of perception. His works evoke a quiet attentiveness, drawing our attention to the rhythms of daily life, bodily movements, institutional routines, and the latent histories embedded within architectural structures.

Past projects like Room of Rhythms (2012) and ÇIN (2017) illustrate Erek’s capacity to produce immersive environments by carefully calibrating sound, architecture, and movement. Rather than overwhelming visitors, these installations gently guide personal pathways and encounters and allow individual experiences of spaces. Simple architecture structures – staircases, ramps, or minimal spatial demarcations – become frameworks within which sound interacts with human movement, dissolving clear distinctions between perceiver, architecture, and performer. Similarly, in works such as SSS – Shore Scene Soundtrack (2006), Erek repurposes mundane materials (carpets, manuals, diagrams) into instruments that invite the audience to actively participate in the construction of acoustic landscapes.

For the work presented in this Bienal, Rampa rítmica/ Rhythmic Ramp (2025), Erek has created a spatial choreography on the external ramp of Niemeyer’s iconic modernist building connecting the different floors and chapters of the exhibition with each other, employing rhythmic interventions that mediate architectural boundaries. The site-specific work relies upon precisely articulated sonic and geometric elements, using the temporality of sound and its architectural positioning as a tool to modulate the spatial experience. Central to this experience is the ramp itself – used daily beyond Bienal hours by passersby, joggers, and others – which now offers a site where rhythmic elements resonate with each other, the architecture, and the surrounding environment. The ramp’s sonic world includes patterns distilled from diverse music undergrounds, including Erek’s native Istanbul and São Paulo’s vernacular rhythm-scapes. The work invites associations on movements through space – of ascent and descent – that link sonic and architectural worlds, as well as the rise and fall within movements and histories.