my grandmother, who, according to the family, didn’t understand, nor speak english, would gingerly announce, “olga is bad, very bad.” what is having a “command” or a language? a command is only an utterance of force. most important feelings and thoughts are expressed in sentences of five words or less. simple. exact. straight to the puncture. a gauge.
when learning a new language it’s as though speaking into a telephone for the first time, hoping the voice transmits some sorts of meaning. practicing what and how one will say the intended phrase. over and over. it feels as though speaking into a void—hoping what comes out, holds body, holds shape. when the answer is received, it is blurred noise. a mumble. as though all the words were swallowed up by the world. when learning a new language, it is like speaking with one’s own self. when learning a new language, it is like screaming onto a well. into a wall. to find an echo, feedback. deflecting back sounds familiar. screaming again, hoping for the echo to return.
with words in the form of tests, pass codes. only to reach a laberinto de mas palabras y mas codigos. where mass has no shape nor form. far reaching and boundless; amorphous beings. all of the places i once loved, lived, and remembered become one. extended through memorial space resembling one another.
i dream of long winter nights. the ones in which the demons are out. relearning to be alone. only me and the broken pomegranate juice running down my hands. sticky mess all over the written pages. reconstructing language. its sticky, messy juices seeping through the cracks of my pores. maggie nelson says language is innately commanding. she read this in a book by barthes. i seek home within language. but all language seems obsolete.
Born in Kiev, Ukraine, Olga works within the mediums of photography, text, and installation. Her focus is on memory, home, (dis)place, language, inheritance/loss and the disruptive. She currently resides in Olympia, WA, where she co-founded and co- curates Desuetude gallery.
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