(Mis)reading, (Mis)translating, (Mis)interpreting, (Mis)remembering. From text to drawing
Brief:
(Mis)reading,
(Mis)remembering.
(Mis)understanding,
(Mis)interpreting.
Thinking,
Recalling,
Drifting,
Dreaming…
This drawing series first begins with text. A work of fiction (or any other genre for that matter) is first read, then filtered, and then finally imagined by the reader. Eventually, as if by an act of alchemy, these words are turned into a drawing: letters turn to form and form into space.
The drawing, like words, is also an act of communication. However, in this conversation between the viewer and the drawing, not everything is conveyed, and not everything is understood. After all, the image created in the reader’s mind is not identical to that conceived by the author. Interpretation… lost in translation… when reading a book, everyone holds their own version of the story in their mind. Our unique experiences, preferences, understandings, and knowledge have moulded us to conjure up our own versions of the stories which we read.
However, there is richness in giving form to that misunderstanding or mistranslation. Physicality is given to what exists between the lines, as well as within them: in this action, a new fiction is born. The page becomes the exploratory terrain where words have transformed into a shape. It is the language which changes. No longer having to “read” from left-to-right, there is no beginning nor ending, no punctuation or grammar and no sentence structure to restrict the reverie.
The textual fiction of the writer becomes the spatial fiction of the reader.
___
Funes the Memorious and the Garden of Forking Paths
(Mis)reading, (Mis)translating, (Mis)interpreting, (Mis)remembering. From text to drawing.
Graphite on paper and photographs printed on acetate
1782 x 841 mm. 2021
One evening long ago, I read two stories for the first time. These were Funes the Memorious and the Garden of Forking Paths by Borges. In that particular book which collected many of the author’s fictions into a single edition, the two stories happened to follow each other consecutively. While each story was clearly delineated with its usual title page, the physical boundary of the thin paper page was not enough to separate the worlds which they harboured…
This drawing is a transcription of the two stories which I had read, from text to drawing. However, it was not an exercise in faithfully representing the worlds exactly as Borges had intended in text, but rather, to spatialise the interpretation (or misinterpretation) of the stories recalled. It was an exercise in revealing what was remembered, what was forgotten, what was interpreted and what was imagined…
The conventional language of architectural representation (the orthographic projections of plan, section, elevation) are all gathered on the same page. However, just like text, these drawings are also vulnerable to interpretation and imagination: elements of the spatial story disappear and re-appear, or take on a different form, orientation, or scale. In some places, between the drawings, new spaces are conjured up.
Pencil-work and photographs printed on acetate become the main medium of this drawing. Textual excerpts taken from both fictions are collaged as well. However, these textual fragments reveal moments of apparent confusion: those moments which I had thought were part of one story but in fact, belonged to the other. Patios, meadows, darkened rooms and rusted gates, expansive labyrinths melding with the ripples of water, and smoke-filled rooms with ivory desks. From this misremembering of the two stories, a new fiction is born.