2021-24, cardboard, nails, cyanotype, air dry clay, paper twine, hand spun paper yarn, serigraph

translanguaging

[ trans-lang-gwi-jing, tranz- ]

noun

Linguistics. the integrated use of all the languages an individual speaks in a single linguistic system, often involving the mixing of grammatical, morphological, or lexical features from more than one language or dialect.

Translanguage Sequences is an ongoing series of actions developed in response to nervous system dysregulation. Each sequence pairs simple, repetitive tasks with a set of instructions — a search for connection framed through scientific language, nonsense, and institutional authority. The project emerged from a growing awareness of how environmental and social forces impact my divergent body, prompting the need for a new methodology of care and adaptation.

Each sequence involves 100 artefacts or "leavings," created through repetitive processes using common materials and obsolete mechanical tools — looms, typewriters, printing presses. These machines, with their own constrained languages and button-based logic, become collaborators. I work translingually with them, merging techniques and materials across disciplines. The rhythm of making resembles an assembly line, but the goal is not efficiency — it is attunement: to the body, to the tools, to the materials.

The resulting objects function as self-portraits — records of strategies I use to navigate multiple forms of divergence. I care for them through imposed systems of organization, drawing on (and subverting) institutional taxonomies to critique structures that fail to reflect lived experience. These acts are a way of building beyond fixed categories, toward more fluid, inclusive forms of being.

Made with support from the Canada Council for the Arts.

Amanda Wood

Amanda Wood