Crystal Murray

A Franco-American artist based between Paris and London, Crystal Murray has been developing a unique musical and visual body of work since her teenage years, at the intersection of alternative pop, R&B, electronic music, and performance art. The daughter of jazz saxophonist David Murray, she explores the connections between identity, heritage, emotions, and the body, while rejecting aesthetic and cultural categorizations. With “Anatomy of a Cry”, her latest six-track project, she examines crying as a physical and emotional expression through a sonic exploration of the voice, fragility, and intensity.

At Villa Medici, Crystal Murray continues to explore the architecture of emotions through real and imaginary places, liminal spaces, and inner geographies that traverse dreams and memory. Drawing on research into African American vocal traditions, oral culture, spirituals, the blues, and bodily expression, she seeks to explore the voice as a site of memory, transmission, and resistance. From breath to cry, from song to speech, Crystal Murray seeks to understand what the voice carries of the unconscious, the intimate, and heritage—and what it can reveal beyond the meaning of words.