Fine Art Photography School of Fine Art
Mimi Belilty
Based in Glasgow and London, I am an artist, writer, and musician whose practice explores the intersection of sound, space, installation, and archival material. A graduate of the Glasgow School of Art, my work centres on sourcing and shaping audio from diverse environments—blending rhythmic, acoustic, harmonic, vibratory, and percussive elements with the mundane and non-musical.
My process involves constructing unique instruments from scrap and found materials, merging craftsmanship with sonic experimentation, and fusing traditional forms with electronica. Sensory elements such as colour theory, scent, and the concept of affection are integral to my installations, enriching the immersive experience.
A significant part of my practice involves hand-building my contact microphones, synthesisers, and bespoke electronic instruments. I also create suspended and task-based installations that challenge spatial dynamics. This hands-on approach deepens my connection to materiality and allows me a richer understanding of each piece’s acoustics—how sound behaves in space and how the physical construction influences resonance and vibration.
I draw heavily from my family archives, incorporating instruments, photographs, handwritten recipes, letters, and recordings of my father and brothers. Through this deeply personal lens, I examine themes of grief and the distortions it casts over my childhood. Nostalgia, memory, and my Moroccan heritage are pivotal forces in my work, often manifested in immersive spaces designed to invite reflection, serenity, and discovery.
I am passionate about music research, particularly the ethical and cultural dimensions of music from the Middle East and Africa. This interest has informed an extended body of writing that critiques the commodification of non-Western music within a Western framework. Drawing from this knowledge, I ran as president for Hill52 Radio, where I regularly produced shows that extended my sonic practice into the realm of broadcast.
Voices from the Other Room
When I was much younger, bedtime came just after a late dinner. I’d fall asleep with my ear pressed to the floorboards, listening to the music my dad and other musicians were playing downstairs. The sounds would permeate through the wood and enter into my dreams, soft melodies becoming part of my sleep.
My degree show piece and its soundscape emulate that feeling for the viewer. Voices from the Other Room invite the onlooker to enter the installation, weaving through the suspensions to rest comfortably and stay for as long as they would like.
In recent months, I’ve brought together a group of musicians to experiment with collective improvisation, aiming to make performance more accessible to untrained players. Inspired by North African improvisational culture—where playing together is instinctive and organic—these sessions became spaces of cultural hybridity, combining violins, trumpets, mic’d-up tape recorders, and Elektron boxes the installation of traditional instruments and wiring. The performances have since evolved into a socially engaged practice, with invitations extended to the local Garnethill community, including Garnetbank Primary School and the Garnethill Multicultural Centre.
Culturally-rooted, diverse hand-made instruments hang in mid-suspension, amplified through hand-built contact microphones. Here, wiring is celebrated, playing with the intersections between tradition and electronica, between digital and analogue.
A family tea set and audio mixer stand together to reflect this balance, with spiralling cables enveloping the installation.
The soundscape weaves samples from my brother David Balilty’s music and from singer Mariem Hassan, whose song ‘Magat Milkitna Dulaa’ was a favourite of mine and my dad’s. This is all for him.
15-minute audio loop with 2.5-minute interval
For Sale
Depictions of Giants
An installation featuring family archives and suspended instruments.
An ode to my Moroccan father, who passed when I was 11, I explored my lost Moroccan identity and childhood memories of music. It featured a distorted version of ‘Karanti’ by esteemed Nigerian musician Adesose Wallace (a dear friend to my family).
Electric Tranquilites
Electric Tranquilites is a multi-media installation that combines sound, lighting, and time-based media to craft an immersive, ambient listening environment. The soundscape incorporates field recordings captured across a variety of devices, both vintage and contemporary. It unfolds as an auditory journey, inviting the listener into a narrative of discomfort and distortion, yet simultaneously offering a sense of solitude and safety.
The colourful projection is synchronised with the soundscape, aligning with its climactic moments and eventual resolution. This interplay between sound and visual perception explores how our experience of listening is influenced by colour, with each hue subtly shifting the way we engage with the audio.
Helsinki 2023
Project Links
Ode to Metal
Exploring soldering techniques with Picquot Ware opened up a dialogue between domestic familiarity and unexpected aggression. The sleek, highly polished surfaces of the mid-century tea set – traditionally associated with comfort, warmth, and hospitality – became disrupted through the intervention of sharp, intrusive soldering. These abrupt metallic spikes, protruding from the once-harmonious form, introduced a sense of threat, destabilising the viewer’s relationship with the object.
An item once seen as soothing and nurturing was reconfigured into something ambiguous – perhaps even dangerous. This tension created a moment of pause: Could a teapot, a symbol of ritual and calm, become something to fear? Was this transformation an act of violation or revelation?
The unsettling quality of the altered objects was amplified through the installation environment. Self-made contact microphones were attached directly to the surfaces, capturing and amplifying resonances. These sounds were fed through tangled networks of exposed wiring, deliberately left visible to draw attention to the process, the circuitry, and the labor behind the intervention.
Together, the soldered tea set, the wiring, the sonic feedback, and the handmade plinth display formed a kind of feedback loop: an orchestration of tension between memory, material, and manipulation.
