Artwork > Babel

Books, a means of communication/information, are relegated to the status of matter by electronic technologies. I used books (as a metaphor for language) and clay (for its receptivity of impressions), as the materials to build a Tower of Babel – with books and clay alternately layered in a square box format (reflecting the layers of the Babel stepped ziggurat) and then fired in a kiln. The carbonized books surviving the kiln's inferno surprised me by their durability and fragility, an unexpected outcome, seeming to attest to the endurance of the written word. The fired clay retained a memory of their previous form, embedded into its substance.