Januario Jano is an interdisciplinary artist who works across sculpture, video, photography, textile, sound installation, and performance. His practice reflects on ideas of home and self, constantly challenging historic and contemporary narratives within the context of the growing interdependence of the world’s economies, cultures, and populations.

Research, in the form of exploring historic documents in official and unofficial archives including books, artefacts and photographs, alongside field work and interviews, has always been a core element of Januario’s practice. It is essential not only for the development of ideas that underpin his practice, but also for the thorough selection of material, and texture of each project/artwork. In Sonic Border, this manifests in the study of the relationship between humans and non-humans in relation to time and displacement. 

While at Deveron Projects, Januario developed a project called Sonic Border. Sonic Border is a cartographic soundscape tracing (and imagining) the journey of non humans: birds, plants, animals, from the Global South to Northern Europe, with a particular interest in the common swift population that migrates back and forth every year from the Congo Basin (Southern Africa) to Huntly. The swifts arrive in Scotland in May after completing a non-stop 8000 mile migration over west Africa and up through Europe, before heading back to their wintering grounds from August.