A Song from Across the Sea

Nina Mangalanayagam with Marie Dilmaya Bergqvist and The Whale choir

United by their own diasporic backgrounds and a shared focus on displacement, Mangalanayagam and Bergqvist collaborate with The Whale, a transnational choir of Swedish adoptees, whose name traces back to a blue whale calf killed and taxidermied during Sweden's whaling era. Led by conductor David Juan Andersson, the choir draws on its members’ diverse personal experiences, treating sound as a vessel for connection across histories and geographies. 

At the core of the work is a sound installation capturing the choir’s collective humming of an 18th-century musical score. Drawn from the research of Swedish historian Fredrik Thomasson, the score relates to Sweden’s colonial presence in Saint Barthélemy—a largely overlooked chapter of Swedish history. Each speaker in the installation transmits the isolated hum of a choir member; through a call-and-response of remembrance, the work explores themes of belonging and the unseen wounds of adoption, while reflecting on colonial legacies through an intuitive conversation born of collective memory. 

Co-commissioned by Colomboscope 2026 and Aranya Art Center, and supported by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet). The work has been exhibited in different iterations.

Colomboscope 2026: HD video and 4-channel audio work 17:31 min 
Video Editor: Rasmus Ohlander 
Sound Design: Mappe Persson 
Colorist: Tommy Spaanheden  

Single-channel video with stereo sound 2:08 min
Audio installation of multiple speakers (12)
Sound Design: Jesper Norda