Inside SECOND LANGUAGE: BODUR’s Live-Making Practice

Caption: BODUR at V&A East Storehouse, photographed by Morrigan Rawson ahead of Second Language

There is a particular kind of bravery required to make work in public — the kind that asks an artist to stand inside the unknown and let others witness what happens. BODUR arrives at V&A East this December with a practice shaped by lineage, experimentation and an unusually intimate relationship to sound. Her work has long operated in the space where memory becomes method, where the inherited architecture of the Arabic maqam system meets the unruly possibilities of contemporary production, improvisation and collaborative making.

As BODUR prepares to begin SECOND LANGUAGE at V&A East, she speaks openly about the part of herself coming forward in this moment, the brave yet vulnerable version of her that places the importance of art above her own comfort.

BODUR is part researcher, part storyteller, part chronicler of the interior life. She understands very well the nature of live-making practice and the risk in creating in real time, with no guarantees about what will unfold. “Whatever happens, ‘bad’ or ‘good,’ will be the truth within the piece itself,” she says. The experiment becomes a test of curiosity and trust. “I know I will learn more about myself during this test — what exactly I will learn is yet to be discovered. As someone who always needs an answer, this excites me.”

This tension — between searching and surrender, between intention and emergence — sits at the core of her creative practice. For BODUR, music begins in the body long before it reaches an instrument: voice, breath, fingers, feet, all forming the first tools we inherit. It explains her immediate attraction to the hurdy-gurdy in the V&A collection, not for its form but for what it represents: the physicality of making sound, the way human movement becomes music. In her world, the line between body and instrument is porous.

Caption: Hurdy-gurdy, c.1700. Mus. No. 95-1870 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London 

BODUR: “The human body is an instrument… the instrument is within us and an extension of us.”

So much of her songwriting begins with an interior sensation: melodies that arrive “like a whisper,” as though hummed by an unseen companion. The photograph Talking to My Invisible Friend echoes this experience for her — the moment when a tune appears half-formed, half-remembered, brought into existence only when she finally sings it out loud. “When the whisper comes to me, I breathe a sigh of relief,” she says. “All songwriters fear the whisper may leave one day and never return — that our magic will be gone.”

Caption: John Heywood, Talking to My Invisible Friend (1982). Mus. No. B.131-2013 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
BODUR: “Melodies appear like a voice whispering them inside my head — like an imaginary friend humming a tune that doesn’t exist yet.”

Her practice is full of these delicate recognitions. She trusts a melody only when she finds herself wanting to hear it again and again. “With everything I create, I ask myself, does this need to exist? There is so much music out there — I strive for quality over quantity. If it tastes good, you want more. If it feels good, you want more.” This intuitive barometer shapes the world she is building for SECOND LANGUAGE: a world where music must earn its place through resonance.

Her connection to maqam — the Arabic microtonal system that shaped her debut album — remains a guiding force, though she approaches it not as heritage frozen in time but as a living language. For her, maqam was a portal into belonging; when spoken language felt distant, the musical language of her ancestors became one she understood fluently. “Many of us in the diaspora yearn to reconnect with our heritage,” she explains. “Music became my first language. There is no language barrier with song or improvisation.”

Her journey into maqam emerged from a personal shift: the moment she recognised that the stories and symbols she grew up with were not absent, only waiting to be reclaimed. Learning the oud, studying scales tied to specific emotional states, and playing with the friction between tradition and technology all became part of a broader inquiry into identity.

Her work often circles complexity—on love, humour, grief, contradiction, and the intricate, everyday humanity often stripped from narratives about Arab and Muslim communities. Her heritage also appears in visual fragments: the choreography and textiles of historical performance traditions. She recognised herself in a V&A painting of a dancing girl.

Caption: A Dancing Girl, Punjab or Rajasthan (c.1800–1850). Mus. No. 0928:5/(IS) © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

BODUR: “This painting reminded me of me and my band — the imagery that has inspired our performance design.”

Even further back, she sees echoes of her family in unlikely places — such as the photograph of street musicians by Atget. It brought to mind her father and grandfather, both street traders, who used melodic calls to draw people toward them. “My father’s work as a street trader is as much of a performance art as mine as a music artist,” she reflects. The continuity is emotional rather than professional; it lies in the music of everyday life. This attention to hidden or overlooked forms of expression shapes her understanding of instruments as voices.  

Caption: Jean Eugène Atget, Street Musicians (c.1898). Mus. No. CIRC.410-1974 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

BODUR: “My father and grandfather were street traders… their calls were musical, rhythmic, performative.”

One of the objects she chose reminded her of musicians who struggle with spoken language but communicate effortlessly through music. “Some of us know how to talk but can’t play music; some of us play music but don’t quite know how to talk. Both are essential for life.” In SECOND LANGUAGE, this multiplicity becomes a foundation: sound as alternative speech, improvisation as translation, listening as connection. What makes BODUR singular is the way she brings others into this process. Collaboration is not a stylistic choice for her but a structural part of how she thinks.

Caption: Stringed instrument, 19th century. Mus. No. CIRC.410-1974 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

BODUR: “Some people speak most clearly through music… their instrument is their true voice.”

Her installation in Gallery 2 will reflect this openness. Rather than presenting a finished body of work, BODUR will open the doors of the studio itself. An environment where composition emerges from proximity, presence, and the unplanned intersections between artist and audience. She will be joined by musicians and producers she trusts deeply, forming a temporary ecosystem where sound develops through exchange and responsiveness.

She imagines a constantly shifting atmosphere, shaped by the ensemble’s mood on any given day. If they’re writing something fast and joyful, the room will brighten; if a darker theme surfaces, the energy will settle. The audience is not asked to participate, yet their presence influences the work simply through the rhythms of their attention. “Music has the power to totally affect people’s mood,” she says. “The audience will likely feel whatever we are feeling as they share the space with us.”

Caption: BODUR imagines Second Language as a shifting emotional landscape shaped by the ensemble’s mood. Here she is in front of Le Train Bleu in gallery 2, photographed by Morrigan Rawson

These emotional resonances link closely to her evolving sense of beauty. At this moment in her practice, beauty is not perfection or polish; it is truthfulness, rawness, honesty, imperfection, and the courage to reject expectations. Beauty is a force that unsettles complacency, opens pathways to feeling, and invites others to embrace their own vulnerabilities. In a world marked by fragmentation, this form of beauty becomes a quiet counterforce: a reminder of connection, a pull toward togetherness.

This is perhaps the most revealing aspect of BODUR’s practice—the belief that sound is relational. That it carries people toward one another. That it can hold grief and care simultaneously. That it can honour histories while still inventing futures.

SECOND LANGUAGE will not aim to resolve these tensions; instead, it will let them resonate, stretch, overlap and coexist, as they do in real life:  “To create with your friends and people you love,” she says. “To remove ego from the work, to let go of ownership and control, and allow yourselves to play — to simply see what happens.” This is the seed of change. A practice of generosity. A way of making art that resists isolation and opens toward community.

Caption: BODUR in gallery 2, photographed by Morrigan Rawson: “Music moves me and communicates with me in a way that words can’t.”

In a moment when many feel increasingly disconnected from one another, BODUR’s work reminds us that sound still offers a place to meet. That vulnerability can be a form of strength. And that music can still draw us together.

In the months to come, the creative work shaped during this period will evolve into her next project. SECOND LANGUAGE begins as an experiment and becomes a world shaped by the invisible whisper that tells an artist when something needs to exist.

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Experience BODUR’s live, evolving installation at V&A East Storehouse from 10–12 December, culminating in a special performance on 13 December. BODUR will be joined by Will Heaton, James Hazel, Jono Pamplin, Malte Henning and Gabriel Gifford: 

SECOND LANGUAGE by BODUR – V&A East Special event at V&A East Storehouse · V&A