ROTTERDAM.- To Be Like Water explores and expands on the meaning of code-switching. The exhibition aims to examine and complicate the notion of identity, and consider code switching as a manifestation of a fluid multiplicity that operates within vectors of power.
In linguistics, code-switching denotes the practice of alternating between two or more languages in a conversation by multilingual speakers. Now, the term also commonly refers to the adaptation of a style of speech according to the group who is being addressed. In this sense, code-switching is the conscious or unconscious reworking of different cultural and linguistic identities, depending on different situations. As a performance of different codes, such as language, dialect, movement, gestures, sound, or rhythm, code-switching allows for significations of mutual belonging as well as differentiation. It is a form of translation that requires certain knowledge of complex contexts – the “reading of the room”. Yet code-switching does not only concern self-expression. It can also be the result of an individual’s reaction to their environment, when code-switching becomes a manner to gain access, protect oneself, exclude others, or a way to “pass” as member of the dominant culture. Code-switching disintegrates identity as a single-subject conception of the self, and as a tool for social control and compartmentalisation.
Code switching is language, gesture, movement, a dance of the complex layers of the self. But it is also (self-)surveillance, double consciousness, subterfuge, the (self-)management of speech, of manners, of breath. It is restless, uprooted; it is fluid and ever-changing.
Several artworks in the exhibition deal with the workings of language. Jenny Brady’s film draws together a layered mosaic of Deaf history film and considers who has the right and capacity to be heard. The sing-song in Katarina Zdjelar’s work turns out to be an accent removal class; her video addresses how identity is constructed through language and the act of speech. A video by Katarina Zdjelar addresses how identity is constructed through language and the act of speech, and Robert Gabris’ intimate etchings of tattoos attend to moments in communication when language falters and the body becomes a personal archive, facilitating intergenerational connections. Other works speak of transmutation, shape shifting, and the breaking of boundaries. Ellen Gallagher’s work takes us to the abyssal zones of the deep sea floor to witness the transformation of lifeforms, shifting time, and shape.
In Jumana Manna’s sculptures, bodies respond to their environment, mutate in the process of survival, and form shadowy infrastructure to the exhibition space. Evelyn Taocheng Wang’s diary- -like watercolours invoke personal experiences and the cultural structures the body is subject to. Through music and dance, Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca allude to the tension between cultural preservation and its subversive manifestations. A sculptural piece by Jay Tan resembles a cupboard in an adolescent bedroom. Its compartments speak of desires and the need to hide as well as to slip in and out of roles.
The exhibition includes two newly-commissioned works: a second sculptural piece by Jay Tan, a fantastical waterfall with various imaginings of the self; and a new work by Amy Suo Wu in collaboration with Sami Hammana, Karen Huang, Sarafina Paulina Bonita, and Sandim Mendes.
Their piece with text and textile, which they describe as an embodied publication, is a meditation on questions of visibility and invisibility, transparency and opacity, translation and the refusal to translate, materialised as a protective garment.
Artists: Jenny Brady, Robert Gabris, Ellen Gallagher, Jumana Manna, Jay Tan, Amy Suo Wu (in collaboration with Sami Hammana, Karen Huang, Sarafina Paulina Bonita, and Sandim Mendes), Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca, Katarina Zdjelar. Curated by Kris Dittel.
