I had a moving experience this morning visiting an art exhibit. I went to speak with the artist and see her installation to explore a potential collaboration. The exhibit: “Are We Listening?” by visual artist Rebecca Carlton. She created hundreds of clay-homing pigeons to represent the threatened languages of the world. They hang from the space in a spiral, a migration V, and finally a circle. On the bottom of each pigeon is a language of the world and how many speakers there are for that language. Her exhibit only represents about 10% of the 7,000 spoken languages, many of those who of risk of dying out this century.
I didn’t expect to be so mesmerized by it. Perhaps I don’t visit enough art exhibits. Perhaps it was powerful because it was a private tour and I got to speak to the artist about her inspiration and her intent. We had a beautiful conversation about community and how we hear and see one another.
I stood in front of the V of white clay pigeons when I first took in the exhibit, each hanging from a thin wire, the flock angling down so that the leader was the lowest, right in front of my face. I had this image of a community laid out before me. Or, truthfully, of that scene in Avatar: The Last Airbender when Aang meets the guru and is asked to lay out his grief before him and an image of him facing a culture of airbenders eradicated. I felt both sad and connected.
The exhibit officially opens in late April and goes through June and my homework is to pitch a conversation or workshop I could hold in that space as a follow-up to the Words Matter program from last month that I helped organize for the League of Women Voters. I was inspired by the space and the conversation — and our stories and the power of language is definitely connected to the idea of listening to one another.
Perhaps I should be attending more art exhibits?
With Love,
Natalie