DUST by Christina Martinelli

DUST

Christina Martinelli

15.08 - 31.08.2019

Bladr is proud to present the Brooklyn based artist Christina Martinelli’s first solo show in Denmark.

Being interested in communicating language through abstract yet decipherable code, Christina Martinelli has created works with semaphore as their starting point. Semaphore is a visual way of communicating most commonly used by sailors on ships to communicate across distances. Martinelli has adapted semaphore into a drawn language that she uses to translate her own writing and the writing of others into images.

Beyond dealing with the universality of words and the written language by visualizing that language, “Dust” uses Shakespeare’s Hamlet to investigate the idea of cultural impermanence. Taking as its point of departure the three points in the play where Shakespeare employs dust as a metaphor for ephemerality, Martinelli considers our own cultural ephemerality. What will survive 1000 years of climate change, wars, fires, and neglect? If Hamlet survives will it survive in any other form than in quotations of the work? And even then, will the language it survives in be decipherable?

Kindly supported by
Københavns Kommune, Rådet for Visuel Kunst