This work was a part of Communication Beyond Words, a cross cultural exchange project between Colombia and Australia curated by Erika Siabatto and Michelle Mantsio with the support of the Academy of Design in Melbourne and Unitec in Bogotá.
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Exploded Dialogue
2015
Removable felt and thread
Dimensions variable
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| Photographer: Simon Cotching |
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When a
colourful drawing in felt tip pen and ink from an artist in Colombia
arrived in my post box I did not quite know how to respond to it. The
work was not accompanied by text, not even the artist’s name or
gender, any context to the work was only imagined. In a way, the work
became mine, free to interpret however I felt, I became it's
surrogate author.
Communicating
across languages and cultures offers us a similar freedom, when we
are speaking to a person from a different background we are often
filling in the gaps, the I don’t understand gaps with information
from our own imagination, or assumptions. We feel free to use the
parts that we understand, to create meaning for ourselves in the
dialogue resulting in a story that might be less or more interesting
than the one actually presented to us. I have responded to the work
from Colombia in a similar way, taking shapes and colours from the
work and pulling them out of their context for the viewer to
re-arrange. The final work to be in a state of flux, to be
re-configured but never completely understood or complete.
