Uta Eisenreich’s presentation will feature two video works exploring the poetic space between sign and meaning. The first, IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING (2024), is a two-screen video installation of a glossary of hand signs. Structured like a slide show, the work features signs the artist has learned from her Deaf collaborators, who use a range of sign languages, including Dutch Sign Language, American Sign Language, Chinese, Korean, Jamaican, and Yugoslav Sign Languages. This evolving and subjective collection reflects her own learning process, which started with workshops and meetings with her collaborators in 2022, and is still ongoing. Through its juxtaposition of iconic and arbitrary signs, the work reveals the ingenuity, humour, and poetry inherent in signed communication. It also highlights how sign languages reflect cultural assumptions and offer distinct perspectives on the world, celebrating the diversity of human expression.
In her second work WHAT YOU SEA IS WHAT YOU WET (2024), Deaf signers from different linguistic backgrounds are involved in a playful, interactive game. They are using iconic signs, that visually resemble their meaning, so that non-signers can still guess the meaning. This encourages the viewer to see how iconic signs can transcend specific sign languages, allowing for cross-cultural understanding through shared visual intuition.
