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Hidden narratives

Item date(s): 2010

Louisemarie Combrink


Medium: Perspex; Books
Size: 220mm
Technique: Enamel paint
Edition: Unique

Theme(s): Meaning; Language

Place publication: (Potchefstroom, RSA)
Publisher: The artist

Additional notes:
Six individual works titled:

1. Bloedblomme

2. Different ways of dying

3. An absence can keep you alive

4. Language surrenders

5. Opacities

6. Die onvertaalbares / Accidentally burnt as rubbish

Reference note:
The artist states:

Anne Michaels, in her novel 'Fugitive Pieces', says "there's a heavy black outline around things separated from their names" with reference to a refugee and poet/translator's pursuit of meaning in a new language.

Because we read books and live through what we read, sometimes in various languages, we experience books as things that can be opened, read, unlocked. The unthinkable: not being able to read or open a book. "Hidden narratives" explores a perspective on the book when the obvious reading is not possible, the book becomes an artefact that should be regarded in strange terms: as an object with body language, subjective associations and veiled meanings. The ritual of opening and turning pages, of time that passes and flows with reading, now becomes a moment and a narrative frozen in time: a longing. This first impulse of turning pages is frustrated: access is impossible because of the enclosed space of the book where only vague reflections suggest further levels of reading. "Hidden narratives" plays with the notions of the language of presence and absence, linguistic leaps and untranslatability, and the moment when language surrenders to find new meanings.

220 x 250 x 120mm

Exhibition notes:
Included on the exhibition 'Transgressions and Boundaries of the Page', exhibited at WOORDFEES 2010. Archive Room in JS Gericke Library, University of Stellenbosch, 1st - 6th March 2010; The Gallery of the North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 15th April - 13th May 2010; the FADA Gallery, Faculty of Art Design and Architecture, University of Johannesburg, 12th - 30th July 2010.

Ref: DP/10068














Images courtesy Wessie van der Westhuizen NWU




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