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Mortal Glyph
Liquid Tongue

2022
Print series
Fabricated object
Stop-motion video, 0'49"

This printmaking project uses a soap block as the original plate, which erodes with each printmaking session. The gradual dissolution of the plate into prints means the plate cannot outlast its copies, and it also makes each copy inevitably unique. At the same time, the copies are still related, every impression is shaped by the same carved cavities inside the soap block, so the prints become a series of variations, connected by the shared inner structure of a single plate. In this process, the plate itself becomes almost indistinguishable from the images it produces, dissolving into its own reflections and making each copy a trace and a dissolution of the original.

It then splits into two forms of output: one as static prints arranged on a layout, the other as moving images of those prints sequenced on a timeline.

Mortal Glyph/

The print images are arranged into a six-panel folding screen, each panel displaying one edition printed from the soap block. The layout suggests a structure for reading, like pages laid out in sequence, which in this case shows a flow of forms instead of legible text.

UV print on Hanji,
Six-panel folding screen,
290 x 110 cm (fully extended)
48 x110 cm (folded)

Liquid Tongue/

The prints are re-sequenced as moving images, arranged on a timeline where the forms appear, shift, and disappear over time, giving the sense of organic movement, like watching a body stir from within or maybe a throat articulate.

video, sound, 0'49"

Print scans,
first edition

Soap plate printing