Signs for Those Seeking Light
Presentation Type
Exhibition
Location
Richmond Center for Visual Arts - Atrium
Event Website
https://www.ritagrendze.com/
Start Date
24-3-2018 12:00 PM
End Date
25-3-2018 3:00 PM
Event Date
2018
Description
Offering homage to Latvia’s 100th anniversary since the nation declared its independence in 1918, Rita Grendze’s installation, Signs for those seeking light, is comprised of donated and cast off books that have been cut by hand, mounted and suspended. Premiering in an extended form at the National Library of Latvia in Rīga during the summer of 2017, Signs for those seeking light celebrates books as objects of reverence, while also giving voice to writing as a powerful visual language. For Grendze, books are physically emotive objects, even though a book’s contents are intangible and often fleeting or confined to memory and history.
Rife with references that relate text, textile, and symbol, Latvian is among the most ancient languages spoken today. The word for writing, for example, is “rakstīt,” and the root word “raksti” means both writing by hand as well as the “writing” of ethnographic designs and symbols, some of which can be traced back more than one thousand years. It is from this perspective that Grendze explores language and writing simultaneously as patterns, word fragments, and as an environment. Signs for those seeking light invites a closer look at the marks on these deconstructed pages, and the installation’s reconstructed physical form.
Signs for Those Seeking Light
Richmond Center for Visual Arts - Atrium
Offering homage to Latvia’s 100th anniversary since the nation declared its independence in 1918, Rita Grendze’s installation, Signs for those seeking light, is comprised of donated and cast off books that have been cut by hand, mounted and suspended. Premiering in an extended form at the National Library of Latvia in Rīga during the summer of 2017, Signs for those seeking light celebrates books as objects of reverence, while also giving voice to writing as a powerful visual language. For Grendze, books are physically emotive objects, even though a book’s contents are intangible and often fleeting or confined to memory and history.
Rife with references that relate text, textile, and symbol, Latvian is among the most ancient languages spoken today. The word for writing, for example, is “rakstīt,” and the root word “raksti” means both writing by hand as well as the “writing” of ethnographic designs and symbols, some of which can be traced back more than one thousand years. It is from this perspective that Grendze explores language and writing simultaneously as patterns, word fragments, and as an environment. Signs for those seeking light invites a closer look at the marks on these deconstructed pages, and the installation’s reconstructed physical form.
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/latvian-arts/2018/program/11
