Abstract
This article examines two modern artistic explorations of the Chinese character. It takes Xu Bing’s Square Word Calligraphy and Jonathan Stalling’s Sinophonic English Poetry as examples and investigate how contemporary art reimagines and reconstructs the “potential” of Chinese characters and what ideological and political implications these processes may have for transcultural communication in today’s world. Situating the production of both works in Xu’s and Stalling’s respective creative experiences and larger sociocultural conditions, this article shows how both works, which deploy the graphics and the phonetics of the Chinese character as interfaces, engage in the politics of transcultural art creation and communication, and achieve their generative effects. Through this investigation, it hopes to illuminate the critical power of the Chinese character used as an interface in challenging linguistic, ideological, and cultural “norms” and questioning racial, national, and political prejudice.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 621-646 |
Number of pages | 26 |
Journal | Comparative Literature Studies |
Volume | 60 |
Issue number | 4 |
Early online date | 10 Nov 2023 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Nov 2023 |
Bibliographical note
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Keywords
- humanist interface
- Chinese characters
- Xu Bing
- Jonathan Stalling
- graphics
- phonetics