Imagery
New York, 2014
One of the special exhibitions was on Lygia Clark, an artist whose work we both found fascinating. A lot of art is spectatorial, but quite a few of Clark’s pieces were participatory in nature. My favorite pieces were the “Bichos” (“Critters”)—hinged metal sculptures that you could manipulate into different shapes. As a translator, I think a lot about how art is presented, and we translators generally have absolute control (outside of editorial intervention, of course) over our translations. It was really intriguing to see an artist hand over some of that control to the observer. I suppose in a way, that translation is similar—a translation is only complete when it is an interaction between the translator and the reader—but the Bichos seemed to be a particularly bold expression of that idea.