HISTORY OF WRITING
Writing emerged from the realm of art. Historians suggest that graphic art began " talking” around 5000 to 6000 years ago. It began to convey meaning through the transformation of images, such as a horse or an ox, into symbolic sounds, often represented by syllables. However, this transition led to a loss of immediate comprehension. Countless writing systems emerged, many fading into obscurity, while others that remain today are indecipherable.
Part 1
Through constant trial and error, people have been looking for "better" ways to convey speech. As a result, most writing systems that humanity has developed over the past six thousand years are now gone. The scant evidence found on those preserved walls, stones, clay tablets, and papyrus scrolls can only hint at the extent of the quest for the optimal sort of writing. It has been ruthless. While doing this series, I have been thinking of those lost scripts. Here, I am composing larger works out of my small linocut characters by using them as a sort of "movable type.”
Part 2
Imagine a world, in which few people are able to read. It is not that hard: throughout history, the majority of people were unable to decipher symbols, signs or characters let alone write. Even in the age of widespread literacy, which is the past 100 to 200 years, many struggle to comprehend written text when traveling or relocating to different countries. It is a story of today too, when migration rates have reached unprecedented levels.
Part 3
In this series, birds and other small animals are transformed into pictograms. While experimenting with monoprints, I realized that the resulting icons resembled characters in an imaginary script. In a similar way, thousands of years ago, somebody must have stumbled upon the idea of an alphabet. Except that, in this "alphabet," I do not assign the characters any particular meanings. In this collaboration Peter Trudolubov has digitally superimposed my bird-shaped imprints on an old wall so that the actual wall remains intact. The walls we used belong to a 17th-century church in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Part 4
In this series animals are transformed into imaginary letters. I enjoy the lo-fi, analog feel that these kinds of linocut prints produce. The story of alphabets is quite amazing. Unlike ideographic (Adinkra, Testerian, Emoji) or logographic systems (Egyptian hieroglyphs, Chinese characters, Mayan characters), which are incredibly diverse and separate from one another, many alphabetic writing systems have a common root. The majority of alphabets in use today trace their origins to one source, the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet.
