Helen Keller, 2024

 

For a pdf with more information on the works, click here.

This group of works develops from archival images of the American author and activist Helen Keller. As narrated in her first autobiography, Keller lost both sight and hearing in infancy. At age six the realm of language and the possibility of conceptual communication was patiently unfolded to her through touch, through the hands.

Keller’s story of coming into language dramatises the miraculous nature of language acquisition more broadly. Initially, these works were my way to dwell within this marvel, as well as upon the moving beauty of Keller’s narrative—a story of light and caresses, of novel negotiations of interiority and exteriority; of vision, innocence, foresight, and insight.

The works themselves, however, opened wider connections, ranging from the development of the telephone—the first technology to separate the voice from presence—to the destruction of Hiroshima at the dawn of the atomic age.