The work of Sara Santana López (1994) represents a snake. The most important feature of this already symbolically charged creature, is its split tongue. In this work, however, the split is not symbolic of the act of saying one thing while meaning something else, but of the possibility to speak in two tongues, or languages.
Translation is central to Santana López’s artistic practice. She explores possibilities for visualizing the translator’s personal interpretation, without erasing the original text. This reverts back to the poem that is incorporated in the snake. The writer Guillaume Apollinaire was the first to come up with these so-called calligrams — a typographical style in which the combined letters form an image — to emphasize the ambiguity of the text. “By transforming the image of the snake while simultaneously leaving the text itself unaltered, this snake-shaped text enables me to subjectively interpret the text.”
The text in question was written by the poet Marlene NourbeSe Philip. Her Discourse on the Logic of Language serves as a poetic and powerful reminder of the fact that the descendants of enslaved people have been forced to use the English language, causing them to lose their own. At Prospects, visitors can read the snake-shaped poem and simultaneously listen to it. Four non-native speakers of English are heard reciting the poem. Santana López made a transcript of the recordings, including mistakes and mispronunciations: “I want to find out how spoken language and written text mutually affect each other.”
Text: Jorne Vriens
Translation from Dutch to English: Marie Louise Schoondergang