The works on display here draw from iconic literature or historical sources, and several of the artists incorporate their own images to translate a diverse range of texts.
The Badlands publication provides access to a newly translated dictionary. Dages pays visual homage to Word Rain by Gins. Homer is the focus of a visual translation by Hoeckele. The works by Lorenz, Maddox and Maret investigate how history has been interpreted through time. Some of the works are new creations from original texts such as Ruefle’s erasure art. Le Livre des Mille offers a visual translation of the classic text entitled 1001 Nights.
Each artist presents a visual translation of texts utilizing a variety of media, including erasure and typography, very often reinventing the original.
Paul Chan. Word Book. Text by Ludwig Wittgenstein, illustrated by Paul Chan, translated by Bettina Funcke, introduction by Désirée Weber. Brooklyn, NY:Badlands Unlimited, 2020.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), an influential philosopher focused on language, compiled a dictionary in 1920 for elementary school children in response to a lack of inexpensive dictionaries. He wrote the dictionary when he was teaching in rural Austria. Word Book is the first English translation of his Wörterbuch fur Volksschulen (Dictionary for Elementary Schools). The book foretells Wittgenstein’s influence on how art, culture and language are understood. Artist Paul Chan, founder of Badlands Unlimited, illustrated this edition with his ink drawings.
Marianne Dages. Rain Words. Philadelphia, PA: Sistrum, 2021, no. 9 of an edition of 50, signed by the artist.
Accompanied by Risograph printed pamphlet entitled WE’RE ALL WATER.
Marianne Dages is a print, book and installation artist who works with visual repetition, translation, and language.
“Rain Words is a mirrored reproduction in its entirety (and in blue) of Word Rain (1969) by Madeline Gins’ masterwork of experimental fiction … In Rain Words, Dages’s interventions act as a prism through which the original book’s contents are read and transformed. … Dages has created a looking-glass for the reader to step through.”
Kim Hoeckele, with essay by Wendy Vogel. Rosy-Crimson. Brooklyn, NY: Small Editions, 2022, no. 45 of an edition of 100.
Wire binding by Annie Hillam.
Hoeckele is a multimedia artist working in performance art, photography, found objects, and video art. Her photobook was created in response to Homer’s The Odyssey and, together with a performance, acts as another form of translation of the epic poem. Reinterpreting an image of the sunset over the Mediterranean, the artist created twenty-eight photographsthat refer tocyclesin time in The Odyssey. The book challenges the role of the translator and whose stories get told and how.
No. 35 of an edition of 45, signed by the artist. Silkscreen printed in Century Schoolhouse on cotton sheet at Edizioni Grafiche Il Navile, hand-colored and cut by the artist).
American artist Lorenz has created many limited-edition artists’ books, several of which center on language. Here she presents examples of misrepresentation of women through western history.
“Pandora’s Hieroglyphic Primer is a poem of words and hieroglyphics colored by hand. The text is based on information from history and mythology concerning prototypes of women responsible for propagating evil in the world. … I discovered that the number of negatively-depicted women was enormous, and thus I have limited my representations to a select few …”
Christopher Kit Maddox. Corruption: 10 translation cycles of 80 stages, terminating in the English language. Madison, WI: Organization for the Reinterpretation of Cultural Sediment, 2019.
No. 15 of an edition of 150, signed by the artist. Folded insert in back cover titled “We Will Bury You”. Vellum overwrap.
Translation is key to this work by Maddox who integrates printmaking, drawing, painting, photography, and graphic design focusing on historical quotes:
“This work of experimental text art and process poetry is an anthology of experiments with the degradation of hostile and defensive messages delivered by world leaders. The collection tracks ten quotations as the words travel across language barriers. The process of translation, exacerbated by cycling through a chain of 80 languages, transforms specific ideas into something general, ambiguous, stripped of its original power …”
Russell Maret. Three Constitutions. New York, NY: Russell Maret, 2021, no. 37 of an edition of 90.
All typefaces designed by Russell Maret: Roma Abstract, Hungry Dutch, and Utopia Sans.Printed on Zerkall Book and Twinrocker Handmade papers, metal type and photopolymer plates. Three volumes presented in three-tray drop-spine box made by Amy Borezo of Shelter Bookworks. One volume presented in an acrylic vitrine.
Russell Maret is an American letterpress printer, type designer, artist, and author. Language, translation, and redaction are key elements of this presentation that explores constitutional interpretation. The full text of the US Constitution, and its amendments, are presented in one volume. The other volumes are interpretations: one is a redacted version and the other comprises constitutional information found on the Internet. Together, the three volumes are intended to mirror the fractured state of political discourse in America.
Mary Ruefle. A Little White Shadow. Seattle, WA: Wave Books, 2006.
Erasure of pages of text from Emily Malbone Morgan’s book of the same title (1890).
…. seven centuries of ... sobbing … gathered … in the twilight … and … had their … pages … wandered … through.
José Maria Sicilia. Le Livre des Mille Nuits et Une Nuit, volets IV. Paris, FR: Michael Woolworth, 2015, no. 10 of an edition of 20. Signed by the artist.
Printed by Marc Moyano, Julien Torhy, and Michael Woolworth (lithographs and woodcuts). Photogravure by Vincent Fardoux. Embroidery by Carmen Vassal’lo.Based on the 1910 edition of The 1001 nights, translation by J. C. Mardrus (Fasquelle, Paris).
Based in Paris, Woolworth is a printer who works with other artists to create books and prints. This artists’ book incorporates lithography, photogravure, woodcuts, and embroidery and is an intervention of a volume of the Fasquelle edition of One Thousand Nights and a Night (also known as The Thousand and One Nights). On view is one volume in a series published by Woolworth that examines the Fasquelle multi-volume edition.The images come from Spanish artist Sicilia’s research in the visual rendering of sound.
