Carnegie International 2013: artists in translation
I knew that our time was going to be short to see the whole Carnegie International (see the previous post about being there with kids to understand why we weren't exactly in lingering mode). I was, for obvious reasons, interested in the two included artists from China, He An and Guo Fengyi, so I made a special effort to see their work.
One of He An's pieces, What Makes Me Understand What I Know?, was impossible to miss, even from out in the parking lots behind the museum.
More after the jump
From the notes provided in both the free booklet and the wall, I knew that the installation was composed of light-box characters spelling out He An's father's name and the name of a Japanese adult film star Miho Yoshioka. With the limits of my own literacy, I could pick out the character for the surname 何 (Hé) as well as the word 美 (Měi), but only on the top line. The 美 on the bottom was too stylized for me to read on its own. Only in the context of symmetry did I see that, too, was 美.
Later, I found on Beijing's UCCA website the full Chinese name for the installation series 《是什么让我理解我的知道？》, which is pretty much the same as the English. Through trial and error with a dictionary I figured out that the characters for He An's father's name were 何桃源 (Hé Táoyuán) and the Japanese, ahem, actress's name in Chinese was 吉冈美穗 (Jí gāng měisuì). These, then, can clearly be made out forwards and backwards on the wall.
I wondered then, if the information the Carnegie provided visitors should have also included the Chinese name for these installations, and spelling out what the characters were. Does it matter knowing that on the top line, the first three characters belong to the father's name, and the last four to the actress? Someone much more literate in Chinese than I would be able to figure that out without any other help. But for those of us with only a beginner's acquaintance with the Chinese language, would this information improve our (my) understanding of He An's work?
In another part of the museum, Guo Fengyi's haunting drawings hung in a silent row. I have no pictures of my own to share of them since this was one area where photography was forbidden. Guo Fengyi was an untrained artist, turning to drawing only in middle age when she could no longer work in a factory because of her arthritis. These drawings, some of them several meters long, hinted (to me) what our souls must look like to those that can see them. I noted the titles, none of which were given in Chinese characters, and wondered if they correlated with the actual Chinese names of each piece. The one that really made me wonder was Statue of Liberty. It sounded, well, too good to be true, and a little out of place with the other drawings which seemed to have names that drew upon more classical Chinese themes.
Later I was able to look at the website for Guo Fengyi's Beijing gallery, Long March Space, and toggle between English and Chinese to see if the titles matched up. I looked immediately for Statue of Liberty, and there she was, called 《自由女神》 (Zìyóu nǚshén) which is Mandarin for Statue of Liberty. How, then, did Guo come to draw a Statue of Liberty, among all these other subjects inspired by Chinese myth?
I continued to look at the other names.
Some of the names were not translated, but merely transcribed into pinyin. For instance, Suirenshi, in Mandarin 《燧人氏》, was the name emperor of legend who also discovered fire. In this case the Chinese and the "English" matched precisely. In another drawing, the English name is a little more descriptive than the Chinese. 《文成公主》 is titled in English, Tang Dynasty Princess Wencheng. The original Chinese name makes no specific mention of Tang Dynasty, just her name and title. I wondered why the English title reflected more clarification, whereas others, like Suirenshi, left as is, and not Emperor Suiren, Discoverer of Fire.
Since this visit I have been wondering what interest, if any, would there have been to include the Chinese titles with the Chinese artworks. Was that any more necessary than what was already provided? Would that change the visual impact? Do the titles need to be in English for an English-speaking audience?
Looking through the rest of the artists and their titles, it appears that there were no standard applied. Italian Lara Favaretto, whose deteriorating red cube was a special hit with Brigid and Evangeline, has her artwork bearing French titles, without English translation. Iranian artist (who is still active in Iran) Kamran Shirdel has some films at the International with Persian titles, and some with English, while Iranian artist-in-exile Rokni Haerizadeh (now based in Dubai) has artwork included in the show with only English titles, as does his Dubai gallery.
Then, of course, there is Zagreb-based Mladen Stilinović, whose famous banner An Artist Who Cannot Speak English Is No Artist stems from his experience in the global art-world in the 1990s and how English (or at least a special form of English) had come to dominate the art-world, and how he felt it excluded artists like himself. Has anything changed from then?
So I puzzled through this year's Carnegie International, and, obviously, for a while after. Which language mattered most to the art included in this show? What matters to the audience in viewing the art? How does a curator make these decisions? Questions of translation I am more familiar with as they relate to literature, or even more mundanely, any printed word. But how does it work in art?
One of He An's pieces, What Makes Me Understand What I Know?, was impossible to miss, even from out in the parking lots behind the museum.
More after the jump
From the notes provided in both the free booklet and the wall, I knew that the installation was composed of light-box characters spelling out He An's father's name and the name of a Japanese adult film star Miho Yoshioka. With the limits of my own literacy, I could pick out the character for the surname 何 (Hé) as well as the word 美 (Měi), but only on the top line. The 美 on the bottom was too stylized for me to read on its own. Only in the context of symmetry did I see that, too, was 美.
Later, I found on Beijing's UCCA website the full Chinese name for the installation series 《是什么让我理解我的知道？》, which is pretty much the same as the English. Through trial and error with a dictionary I figured out that the characters for He An's father's name were 何桃源 (Hé Táoyuán) and the Japanese, ahem, actress's name in Chinese was 吉冈美穗 (Jí gāng měisuì). These, then, can clearly be made out forwards and backwards on the wall.
I wondered then, if the information the Carnegie provided visitors should have also included the Chinese name for these installations, and spelling out what the characters were. Does it matter knowing that on the top line, the first three characters belong to the father's name, and the last four to the actress? Someone much more literate in Chinese than I would be able to figure that out without any other help. But for those of us with only a beginner's acquaintance with the Chinese language, would this information improve our (my) understanding of He An's work?
In another part of the museum, Guo Fengyi's haunting drawings hung in a silent row. I have no pictures of my own to share of them since this was one area where photography was forbidden. Guo Fengyi was an untrained artist, turning to drawing only in middle age when she could no longer work in a factory because of her arthritis. These drawings, some of them several meters long, hinted (to me) what our souls must look like to those that can see them. I noted the titles, none of which were given in Chinese characters, and wondered if they correlated with the actual Chinese names of each piece. The one that really made me wonder was Statue of Liberty. It sounded, well, too good to be true, and a little out of place with the other drawings which seemed to have names that drew upon more classical Chinese themes.
Later I was able to look at the website for Guo Fengyi's Beijing gallery, Long March Space, and toggle between English and Chinese to see if the titles matched up. I looked immediately for Statue of Liberty, and there she was, called 《自由女神》 (Zìyóu nǚshén) which is Mandarin for Statue of Liberty. How, then, did Guo come to draw a Statue of Liberty, among all these other subjects inspired by Chinese myth?
Some of the names were not translated, but merely transcribed into pinyin. For instance, Suirenshi, in Mandarin 《燧人氏》, was the name emperor of legend who also discovered fire. In this case the Chinese and the "English" matched precisely. In another drawing, the English name is a little more descriptive than the Chinese. 《文成公主》 is titled in English, Tang Dynasty Princess Wencheng. The original Chinese name makes no specific mention of Tang Dynasty, just her name and title. I wondered why the English title reflected more clarification, whereas others, like Suirenshi, left as is, and not Emperor Suiren, Discoverer of Fire.
Since this visit I have been wondering what interest, if any, would there have been to include the Chinese titles with the Chinese artworks. Was that any more necessary than what was already provided? Would that change the visual impact? Do the titles need to be in English for an English-speaking audience?
Looking through the rest of the artists and their titles, it appears that there were no standard applied. Italian Lara Favaretto, whose deteriorating red cube was a special hit with Brigid and Evangeline, has her artwork bearing French titles, without English translation. Iranian artist (who is still active in Iran) Kamran Shirdel has some films at the International with Persian titles, and some with English, while Iranian artist-in-exile Rokni Haerizadeh (now based in Dubai) has artwork included in the show with only English titles, as does his Dubai gallery.
Then, of course, there is Zagreb-based Mladen Stilinović, whose famous banner An Artist Who Cannot Speak English Is No Artist stems from his experience in the global art-world in the 1990s and how English (or at least a special form of English) had come to dominate the art-world, and how he felt it excluded artists like himself. Has anything changed from then?
So I puzzled through this year's Carnegie International, and, obviously, for a while after. Which language mattered most to the art included in this show? What matters to the audience in viewing the art? How does a curator make these decisions? Questions of translation I am more familiar with as they relate to literature, or even more mundanely, any printed word. But how does it work in art?
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