Sidney Cárdenas
Sound artist · Composer · Music Producer
About
Sidney Alejandra Cárdenas is a Colombian pianist, composer, producer, and researcher whose practice explores music, sound, and audio technology as expressive tools centered on listening, memory, and territory.Within her musical work, she leads Animaleja, a project that blends electronic music with the rhythms and sonorities of Latin American and Caribbean diasporas. Combining synthesizers, percussion, vocals, and live instrumentation, Animaleja creates a distinctive alternative Latin sound with an international presence across live performances and vinyl releases.Alongside her musical path, her work as a sound artist and researcher translates social practices and written inquiry into multidisciplinary installations, performances, and experimental compositions. By linking sound, moving image, and community-based processes, her practice uses listening and sensitive archives to challenge dominant narratives and activate new ways of experiencing place, identity, and territory—focusing on Latin America and its intersections with diasporic contexts.
Animaleja
Animaleja is the musical project of Colombian composer, producer, and performer Sidney Alejandra Cárdenas. Blending electronic music with the rhythms of Latin American and Caribbean diasporas, the project combines synthesizers, live percussion, vocals, and electronic manipulation to create a distinctive alternative Latin sound.Currently releasing music on vinyl through the Nashville-based label No Sabes Projects, Animaleja actively expands its presence across international alternative electronic and Latin music scenes.
Projects
Tropikal Roots
is a personal archive of drawings and sound compositions shaped by memories, experiences, and imagined representations of the tropics. The project explores the tropical as a fluid and ever-changing concept, transformed through memory, distance, and the experience of migration, giving rise to new ways of imagining and inhabiting territory.In November 2026, TropikalRoots will be presented as part of an installation and exhibition at the Centro de Cultura Digital in Mexico City, within the framework of Deslenguadas, an artist residency organized by the Hello World program.
Carreta sonora
La Carreta Sonora is a mobile and participatory sound installation developed in Barbacoas, a neighborhood in downtown Medellín, Colombia. Inspired by the carts used by street vendors, the project creates a collective listening experience that explores the relationships between sound, territory, and identity. Through urban walks, electroacoustic compositions, and real-time field recordings, it transforms public space into a site of encounter, interaction, and sonic creation, inviting audiences to engage with the memories and everyday practices of a historically stigmatized community.
Sonoridades de resistencia
Sonoridades de Resistencia is a series of five electroacoustic compositions created from the soundscape of Barbacoas, Medellín. Combining field recordings, interviews, personal narratives, sampling, looping, and digital sound processing, the pieces explore everyday practices of resistance that shape the neighborhood's sonic identity. From street vendors' calls to artistic expressions, local trades, and the voices of diverse communities, the project invites listeners to experience Barbacoas as a living territory of memory, diversity, and resistance.
Ballena 52
is an immersive, interdisciplinary performance created by the MUSUX collective, combining sound composition, live spoken literature, contemporary dance, and video art. Inspired by the phenomenon of whales communicating at a frequency of 52 hertz, the work explores solitude, resonance, and the possibilities of connection through deep listening.Through the interaction of sound, body, image, and architectural space, Ballena 52 invites audiences to reflect on the loss of acoustic biodiversity and sensory disconnection in a world increasingly saturated with noise.Collective: MUSUX — EAFIT University, Medellín, Colombia
Supported by: 2025 Arts and Culture Grants Program, Medellín Secretariat of Citizen Culture.
Isla fuerte All stars
"Camajón Estéreo" is the first approach towards a professional recording process with the talented musicians of Isla Fuerte - Colombia.In January 2024, for the tenth edition of the Fecisla Film Festival, the festival invited from Medellín the music producer Ruido Selecto and the composer Animaleja to conduct a one-week musical camp with the musicians of the island. From this sound laboratory emerged the songs of this album titled "Camajón Estéreo."The album mixes Caribbean rhythms such as champeta, cumbia, reggae and dembow. Along with modern music production techniques.Compositions by: Animaleja, Ruido Selecto, and the musicians of Isla Fuerte:El Pinta
El Broder
Arnaldo
Nikonay
Pipe Break
Papocho
Dilber Flow
Yan
El Trinar de la montañaProduced by Ruido Selecto & Animaleja
Recorded in January 2024 on Isla Fuerte
Material Unreleased (Not yet published)Fecha de lanzamiento:
12 Mayo 2024
Cuadernos Medellín
Is a project focused on collecting, creating, and organizing micro-narratives of everyday life in the city of Medellín, as perceived and told by women.The first phase of the project took place in August 2018 during an artist residency at Platohedro, with the participation of nine collaborators who joined through an open call published on the residency’s website, motivated by their personal interest in the project.Throughout the month-long process, researcher and curator Maria Catarina Duncan served as a dialogue partner, contributing to reflections on the interactions within the group and the personal dimensions of the artist’s experience during the residency.
Auditum Fest
Sublime y Repulsiva
Is a collaborative sound art project developed during Listening Week 2018 through an underwater field recording workshop led by sound artist Leonel Vásquez. Through the construction of hydrophones, listening walks, and sound recordings of the Santa Elena stream in Medellín, the project explored the relationships between water, soundscapes, and transformations of the urban environment. As part of this experience, Alejandra Cárdenas created Creciente Obtusa, an electroacoustic composition included in the collective album released by Ediciones Éter in 2019. The project was also presented as a sound installation at Parque Explora in Medellín in 2018.
Sublime y Repulsiva — Creciente Obtusa
Auditum · Listening Week | Medellín, Colombia | 2018–2019
