Where Language Goes to Hide 

Wood sculpture
270 x 250cm
2023

 

The project is a sculptural presentation of the liminal space, a wooden sculpture in the form of two Portals attached to each other.

 

While passing through one of the portals, it will be challenging to determine if you are ‘going in or going out’ of the portal. That confusion on the subconscious level will intuitively lead the visitors to walk in a circular movement through the two gates. 

 

This interactivity opens the reflection on the concept of polarity, where the nature of two opposites is round, not linear; the sculpture occupies an invisible circular space and needs people's interaction to reveal its true essence. 

 

Liminality is the zone between two spaces. Spiritually, it is a place of transformation, wisdom, and revelation. Upon standing on the threshold and looking upward, the visitors will see an engraved narrative that can only be viewed from the threshold/liminal space.
 

The engravings on the sculpture feature humanoid birds in different positions between extreme violence and mundane everyday moments. The scenes are wrapped up by a snake-like light ray originating from two stars on both edges of the sculpture. 

The eight-pointed star in old cultures referees to the understanding of life on earth that is tied to 4 seasons controlled by the sun and moon, and since life on earth is a reflection of the heavenly world, doubling 4 to 8 is to call on the balance between two worlds. The 8-pointed star is also the star of Ishtar, the Sumerian goddess of Love and war. The earth and heaven realms are mostly a broad view of what can be considered the world inside the body and the world outside it. Inward and outward.

The bird and the serpent are an old depiction of the relationship between earth and sky, between the urge to fly away with imagination and the grounding reality of having a physical body, and both represent regeneration and the circular movement of life.  

 

The Sufi view of language inspired the work's title, the Sufi considers language as a link between the physical world and the spiritual world; through this connection, language gives the two worlds energy and continuity. This means that language hides in the liminal space between two worlds, two narratives, or two forms of existence.