Re-Articulation: Retrieval, Renewal and Beyond: Translating a visual aesthetic within the fold of postmemory

Abstract

Re-Articulation: Retrieval, Renewal and Beyond: Translating a visual aesthetic within the fold of postmemory

This practice-led research examines how painting facilitates the retrieval and renewal of a displaced cultural aesthetic from one context and idiom to another. In this project, the relationship between retrieval and renewal is addressed as a visual translation. Within art history and theory, the approach to painting as a visual translation is primarily considered as a metaphor. This approach can be traced back to Charles Baudelaire, who suggested that a visual translation was reliant on the skill, vision, ability and temperament of the artist.

This research is set in relation to the impact of the Armenian Genocide 1914-1918, and to my receiving a gift of a catalogue of Armenian manuscript paintings from the 13th and 14th centuries. This context brings together a complex set of interrelated issues that include denial, loss and fragmentation. Set in relation to these issues and contextual framework, visual translation as a metaphor presents as a point of departure in this investigation. Drawing on the images contained within the catalogue and taking into account Marianne Hirsch's concept of postmemory, this research re-examines the relationship between painting and translation. This re-examination takes the form of a series of investigations that involve a critique of the materials, methodologies and formal elements, such as line, structure and colour, that facilitate the process of retrieval and renewal.

Through this research, my intention is to create a body of paintings that facilitates the rearticulation of a displaced cultural aesthetic into this current space and time, and that also contributes to broadening our approach regarding what a visual translation entails. Show more