This is a happy hospital, with some bugs
(ongoing project - 2020)
What is paper? What are letters? What is language? I enlarge and paint pages of a schoolgirl’s handwriting workbook. I choose pages on which she practices not only letters but details of letters – signs promising a language, one that she will be able to use in the future. Teaching people to write is a promise to them that in the future they will be able to articulate their own story. Everyone gets this opportunity, but letters are strict forms of our culture, one needs to control the movements of the hand to become able to follow these forms. We cannot see the person in these pictures but through her precise movements we can see an overly disciplined child, who puts all her efforts to be accepted in school. Assimilation and the way culture rules over people’s bodies – and through their bodies, over their minds - are the centre subjects of these works. In the title hospital refers to culture, and the bugs are the handwritten letters, these living creatures which are traces of a personality. Culture cures us – but of what does it cure us?
The first two photos were taken by #digitaliskepmuhely.
oil on canvas
270x105 cm
oil on canvas
270x105 cm
oil on canvas
270x105 cm
oil on canvas
270x105 cm
