This research focuses on selected artworks by contemporary artists Mona Hatoum
and Candice Breitz to critically examine how they have explored language as a
visual and conceptual tool through the use of video and installation. The primary
aim is to consider how and why these artists have explored paradoxical aspects of
language and to examine the ways in which they have used their medium to question
or challenge the adequacy of communication through language. Born in Palestine
but exiled in Britain as a result of the outbreak of war in her home country, Mona
Hatoum’s artworks reach deeply into her own experience of exile. Her video work
Measures of Distance (1988) is concerned with language and its effectiveness in
communication between people separated by geographical and emotional distance, a
theme that is very close to the concerns I have in my own practical work. I critically
examine Hatoum’s artwork to demonstrate how the complex layering of spoken
word, written script and visual imagery, together with the complication of the
viewer’s position, merge to foreground contradictions and conflicting states. I
consider Candice Breitz’s investigations into the contradictory and provocative
nature of speech and language against the background of her upbringing in apartheid
South Africa and critically examine her concern with the ways in which identity is
culturally constructed. Her preoccupation with the relationship between the mass
media and the linguistic formation of self is examined. I have chosen to focus
mainly on her video installations: Babel Series (1999), Alien (2002), Karaoke
(2000), Four Duets (2000) and Legend (2004).
My own practical work is discussed alongside these concerns, particularly in relation
to contemporary electronic communication such as email and sms text messaging –
along with the frustration that results from its impersonal nature (in contrast to old
fashioned letter writing). I also discuss its impact on relationships separated by great
geographical distances.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/4778 |
| Date | 25 April 2008 |
| Creators | Louw, Paula |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 37791839 bytes, 35591 bytes, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf |
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