Typography of a Figure
Artist
We alternate our language between words and images hundreds of times everyday. We often use words to call something intangible, invisible, massive, sublime. We can call a painting poetic, and a poem painterly or full of textures and colours. I’m interested in the overlap of these two forms of language, when the figure and text (image and word) become inseparable, and this is my approach to typography, the shapes of the words, the bodies of words. Body requires matter. For words, the body can be out of ink, blood of other bodies, digital pixels and screens (electricity), graphite, pigments, and, or..? I experiment with different materials to form the body of a word with. Can a conceptual connection exist between the meaning of the word and the material by which I write the word?
Aileen Bahmanipour is an Iranian-Canadian visual artist. She is currently living and working on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples, known as Vancouver, and in Bella Coola Valley, the traditional territory of Nuxalk people. She has received her BFA in Painting from the Tehran University of Art and her MFA in Visual Arts from the University of British Columbia. She is currently a member of the Continuing Studies and Sessional faculty at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design.
Bahmanipour has exhibited her works internationally as well as in Canada, including her solo and group exhibitions at the GlogauAIR (Berlin), Banff Centre for the Arts, Alternator Centre for the Contemporary Arts (Kelowna), Vancouver’s grunt gallery, Burrard Arts Foundation, Artspeak, Two Rivers Gallery (Prince George), and Aaran Art gallery (Tehran).
Aileen Bahmanipour
Write a word with unconventional materials.
Invitation
Choose a word that represents a concept that has preoccupied your mind recently. This word can be in English or any other languages. You can also invent a new word for your idea by mixing two or more words together.
Choose a material that you associate with your word. If a little limitation is helpful, I suggest narrowing down your material choices to consumable materials, or something related to the body, something that can possibly change its shape through time. Think about how that material speaks to your idea and / or the chosen word.
Write your word with the chosen material in any way possible. For example, you could trace the shape of this word, the shadow or outlines around it, or, depending on your material, you could leave it to mark or stain a surface.
Do the tracing every day, and document changes. Find different visual forms to work with your material, different traceable marks.
Make note of how your material has challenged or informed your writing and reading practice of that specific word, how does the process speak to your concept?