TRANSLATING FROM THE EDGES
Exhibition Dates: September 14 - November 2, 2025
Opening Reception: Sunday September 14, 1-3pm
Translating From the Edges is an exhibit of artist books organized by artist Maria Markham
Artists act as translators of complex ideas and emotions that are not easily defined. Because of the complexity and sensitivity of their matter, they often translate from the edges of content, form and material. In “Translating from the Edges” artists use the artist book to explore their own process, create daily rituals of practice or delve into themes of memory, ecology, the algorithm, identity and pain. These works, in many forms, take the viewer on journeys to places they might normally never visit. Monkia Lin’s dérives lead us randomly in the real world to places that we might never ordinarily discover. In other explorations, the book is deconstructed providing sculptural and movingly elegant responses to tough contemporary issues. For example, Ben Kue’s Zebra Mussel's Ode to Local Clam is presented in sculptural form in three parts using multiple media, whilst Elena Kalova’s work in fabric, You will burn and you will burn out, and you will be healed and you will come back again, is read across a wall. In other works the book takes on different shapes. Les Finn’s a shoe hissing fuses text and image to produce a small star accordion book recounting a story of compression and expansion. Using a linear accordion, Hafsa Nouman’s Mujhe Ghar Jana Hai? translates the idealised memories of childhood that detach a house or home from the world of the ever-existing mundane challenges of adulthood asking “would I still want to live in this house?”
All the artists use multiple media and many explore assemblage, collage and various combinations. Mark Mulroney’s collages in champion 5 and champion 3 provide insight into his process as he thinks through combinations of older and contemporary images. Several artists repurpose actual books. To craft a daily ritual of emotional exploration, Kate Quarfordt’s Tiny Portals uses mixed media in an existing book to envision each page as a portal to a luminous dreamscape or a vividly re-imagined reality. At the edge of poetics and possibility in Erinnerungen (Memories), Heide Hatry preserves only the title of Friedrich von Matthisson’s book of the same name from 1811, erasing each line after she has read it.
Working on the edges of a community’s history, Kristin Eno’s project Archive of Memory features a selection of original handmade books. Each book was made by a different artist highlighting the history of churches and schools in New Haven. In “Translating from the Edges,” the artist books make visible hidden and uncertain meanings. In the act of translating from the edges, these works illuminate the vitality of art’s ability to illustrate and hold the parts of our world that are hidden or elusive, translating anew for contemporary times.
-Maria Markham
TGeoffrey Detrani, Les Finn, Heide Hatry, Bill Healy, Elena Kalkova, Ben Kue, Sonja Langford, Monika Lin, Mark Mulroney, Hafsa Nouman, Kate Quarfordt, Samantha Simpson and also featuring a community book project by Kristin Eno
