Spanglish

Words from the Artist Spanglish is a project made specifically for the Point of Contact Gallery based on its dedication to the verbal and the visual arts and its ties to the Latin American literary and arts community. Comprised of drawing, collage, photography and video, Spanglish is based solely on my understanding and misunderstanding of the Spanish language according to a dictionary. For several months I have been reading The New World Spanish/English, English/Spanish dictionary page by page, definition by definition in alphabetical order – pronouncing aloud each word in search of words that sound like other words (in either English or Spanish), definitions that have intriguing double meanings and/or spelling that can be manipulated.

As a non-Spanish speaker, the attempt to learn a new language through a list of definitions presents many limitations – however it is within the narrow confines of these limitations and maybe because of them that new understanding is created.

I am interested in the fluidity of language in general as a tool of expression and visual language specifically. Word play, puns, figures of speech, metaphor, symbols and tropes are the springboards for this work. All found homophones, homonyms, malaprops, mondegreens, etc. are fair game for content and subject to dissection, misinterpretation, re-understanding and invention.

Spanglish is beyond a spoken language, beyond a hybrid of the english and spanish languages – it is a visual language made up of words, images, signs and symbols. It is amateur visual bilinguistics about the dynamics of language, meaning and representation.