TRANSLATION is a group exhibition of works by artists who have either moved away from their countries to live and work in a different culture and language, or who translate between different types of language: scientific, musical, linguistic and visual.
It offers a dialogue between languages, in a multifaceted exhibition of artists’ books, sculptures, prints and works on paper.
The papercut sculpture I created for this show is called “Gates to a New World”.
I interpreted the word translation as the process of moving something from one place to another. Thinking of the movement of human beings from familiar but hostile places to even more hostile but promising new lands, I rearranged the pages of a World Atlas to create two identical scrolls, 2,5 metres high x 54 cm long; they present scenes of travel and displacement by sea. There is hope, suffering, desperation and sweetness in the same scenes; the people I depicted are made of maps, of the same places they are escaping from, or the promised lands they are trying to reach.
The two scrolls, identical and symmetrical, meet in the middle to create an empty cloud: in old times’ ex-voto paintings, the image of a Saint or Deity would appear in a cloud, to protect the people from accidents or difficult situations.
In my ex-voto there is not space for supernatural; there are only men and women, looking at other human beings struggling to get to a better life.
Here is a video of the making:
gates to a new world from linda toigo on Vimeo.
This work, together with beautiful pieces by other 15 artists, will be exhibited at the Milton Gallery, St Paul’s School, Lonsdale Road, SW13 9JT, London
Private view 7th November 2018
18:00-20:00
8th November – 7th December 2018
Mon-Fri from 9:00 to 16:00
lindatoigo 