The Naming Project / az elnevezési projekt, 2016
Materials: Digital print on awagami kozo paper
Dimension: 111.76 cm x 609.6 cm
Exhibition: Mother Tongue, Varley Art Gallery, 2017
Photo credit: Toni Hafkenscheid
“Names are part of your identity. They expose you and reveal where you might come from.”
Singer’s artistic practice is deeply concerned with the intersection of public and private histories as well as ideas about perception, memory, language, and identity formation. She employs multi-media techniques often with cryptic texts to articulate cultural issues of disjuncture and perception. In the naming project, Singer uses a fountain pen to repeatedly write a series of names across the pages of her journal. As these names appear over and over again; the loops of the artist’s cursive writing create patterns not unlike those of an abstracted drawing. The gradation of ink highlights certain lines and strokes, while subtle differences between the repeated letters further emphasize the hand of the artist.
Each panel contains a different set of names belonging to various family members, including Singer’s own maiden name, but also the names of her parents, grandparents and cousins. While it might not be obvious to the viewer, these names hints at the artist’s conflicted Hungarian/Jewish heritage. What started as a personal journey in reclaiming and confronting her family lineage, became a broader meditation on the meaning of names and the power they hold over us. The change of scale, from a small journal to a large printed wall piece, creates further distance between the personal and the general, between the private and the public.
- Anik Glaude, Curator
Materials: Digital print on awagami kozo paper
Dimension: 111.76 cm x 609.6 cm
Exhibition: Mother Tongue, Varley Art Gallery, 2017
Photo credit: Toni Hafkenscheid
“Names are part of your identity. They expose you and reveal where you might come from.”
Singer’s artistic practice is deeply concerned with the intersection of public and private histories as well as ideas about perception, memory, language, and identity formation. She employs multi-media techniques often with cryptic texts to articulate cultural issues of disjuncture and perception. In the naming project, Singer uses a fountain pen to repeatedly write a series of names across the pages of her journal. As these names appear over and over again; the loops of the artist’s cursive writing create patterns not unlike those of an abstracted drawing. The gradation of ink highlights certain lines and strokes, while subtle differences between the repeated letters further emphasize the hand of the artist.
Each panel contains a different set of names belonging to various family members, including Singer’s own maiden name, but also the names of her parents, grandparents and cousins. While it might not be obvious to the viewer, these names hints at the artist’s conflicted Hungarian/Jewish heritage. What started as a personal journey in reclaiming and confronting her family lineage, became a broader meditation on the meaning of names and the power they hold over us. The change of scale, from a small journal to a large printed wall piece, creates further distance between the personal and the general, between the private and the public.
- Anik Glaude, Curator