Bellingham, Washington
Containing the Navigation
10" x 10" x 1/2"
$400-- To Purchase Contact 23 Sandy Gallery
almeida@cc.wwu.edu
In 1578, the Huguenot Jean de Lery published his famous memoir, History of a Voyage to the Land of Brasil. Considered a milestone of travel literature, Lery’s book is simultaneously ethnography, adventure story, and religious diatribe. In it, he astutely moves from one genre to another while immersing the reader in the universe of his epoch through these multiple verbal perspectives. For Lery, Brasil was above all a rhetorical figure, the trope of a sensual paradise nostalgically, yet systematically, invoked to define his own disappointment with European civilization.
This book is a re-reading and mapping of some of the many dimensions of Lery’s text. Through a series of diagrams and charts, it explores the ways the author framed his arguments and attempts to visually translate these verbal strategies. Each double spread corresponds to a specific chapter in the original text and the maps were developed using at least one of four interpretation criteria: the physical, based on the vivid descriptions of his sensory experiences; the linguistic, based on the discursive patterns found in his prose; the sequential, based on the temporal dimension of the plot; and the referential, based on the relationship between author and subject.
Artist Biography
Cristina de Almeida was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. She received her MFA from the University of Massachusetts and is currently a professor of graphic design at Western Washington University. Her experimental work explores the visual qualities of written language through various printed media.
All images and text copyright the artist. All rights reserved.
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