Calligraphy made of locks: an installation from Wenda Gu

A painter Wenda Gu, living in New York, has been working on a huge project called ‘United Nations’ for twenty years already. The Bable of the Millennium installation at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has come to its closing stage. The installation comprises a twenty-three meter display with the letters scribed on it featuring symbolic characters of different cultures.

The skill of socializing is what makes a human a rational being. Many artists conceptualize the value of speech and language for a human. For example, a snow-white room decorated with Arabic script, which was created by the designer Parastou Forouhar, while wondering about a problem of the language barrier people face in a foreign land. The installation from Wenda Gu is another attempt to show that socializing can become a rescue for native speakers of one language and an insurmountable obstacle for foreigners.

Although, Wenda Gu is sure: something exists that has no language difference, something that is above and can actually unite people. We all are people: two legs, two hands. This fact gives us an opportunity to reach common understandings. To demonstrate his idea, he used human hair as ink for writing letters. For this purpose, he visited 325 hairdressing and beauty salons in 18 countries, having traveled to all continents. He made words in Chinese, English, Arabic and Hindi using locks of hair. There are one hundred stained glass window panels transmitting light into the exhibit hall.

Of course, the audience immediately finds understandable words and begins to read the inscriptions, but finds out that all phrases are not finished. These are just images of foreign cultures that need to be felt rather than understood. At least Wenda Gu himself is convinced that an intuitive way of perception in this case is very productive.

Calligraphy made of locks: an installation from Wenda Gu

Source: kulturologia.ru