PAINTINGS: Visual Heteroglossia
Visual Heteroglossia is a series exploring disparate ways of image making - contrasting organic wood grain patterns with intuitive orthographic architectural forms. The building structures are inspired by the multi-locational visual storytelling methods used in miniaturist and manuscript paintings - where multiple views are included in a single plane.
My panels serve as accumulation points for materials from the past, present and future. They are speculative spaces, where I can simultaneously live in multiple times and tell a story across a variety of perspectives. In the Visual Heteroglossia series, I explore the orthographic architectural configurations often found in manuscript and Persian miniature paintings that unfold without the framework of conventional western 1-point perspective, allowing the viewer to place themselves at a variety of scales and locations. Heteroglossia, a concept developed by Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, describes the presence of and conflict between different types of speech and perspectives (characters, narrators, author, etc) as the driving force behind a powerful story - the birth of the contemporary novel. I seek to embody this - bringing together disparate elements from my daily life in the form of photographic transfers, alongside textiles, hyper-pigmented acrylic inks, and laborious hand-laid gems.
*Photography by Sean Fader and Jeanette May