Punctum.

By: Emily Butler

ABSTRACT

In a globalizing world, the act of translation is potentially everywhere (Bassnett 2014; Blumczynski 2016, in Vidal 2022). It involves a creative process of transfer, interpretation, and transformation across sign systems, cultures, and worldviews – an act with profound socio-political implications. Within the visual arts field, it describes the practice of artists and curators who work increasingly internationally as ’material-semiotic actors’ (Haraway 1988: 595), engaged in renegotiating semiotic and cultural frameworks while questioning the socio-political status quo. Yet, what are the limits of translation? What is lost or gained in this “necessary but impossible” act (Spivak 2022: 69)? Who translates in ‘power-differentiated’ contexts (Haraway 1988: 579-80)? This article outlines how artists and curators explore the possibilities and limits of translation within contemporary art to put forward the poetics of the untranslatable (Cassin 2014; Glissant 1990). It develops the concept of (mis)translation and positions the curatorial space as a translation zone (Apter 2006) – a dynamic, impermanent site of semiotic and cultural renegotiation, where hybrid languages, new forms, knowledges and relations can emerge (Bhabha 1994). In doing so, it embraces a ‘kaleidoscopic totality’ of world views (Bernabé, Chamoiseau and Confiant 1990).

 
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