Meditation on supporting emptiness
on the work of Miriam Londoño >>

My work

Over the past years my work has increasingly involved the use of handwriting made with paper pulp. I developed a technique that allows me to write out stretches of script, using cotton and linnen linters. A duality is created: from a vehicle that supports letters, here paper itself turns into handwriting, and thus into calligraphy. These texts, written without being supported by themselves, become open, transparent structures in which words/paper appear to live and breathe on their own in the air. This allows reading between the empty spaces of letters, creating a visual play between what is in front of us and what is behind us; between contents, letters that float in space, emotion, space and light.

Making paper with handwriting involves an emotional connection to themes like being in touch with loved ones who are far away, conjuring past memories or feeling an urge to reach a sister who died suddenly, with a letter I can never send. 

When I write out words in cotton pulp, they spring to life and become moving shapes with the broad range of possibilities plasticity evokes. As the paper dries, the texts become impossible to read once more. Here and there fragments of words will emerge, but ultimately what remains behind is a visual memory of that single, exhilarating moment of communication.