mind the gap

queeristic strategies in drawing

So what ways are there to achieve a certain degree of “openness” in a drawing?

In my drawings I work with the space between image and text. I aim to combine drawing and text in a way that opens up a space of uncertainty which allows for different interpretations of what is going in the drawing or what is meant by it.

I combine text and images in ways to disrupt certainties. Image and text pretend to give information but at the same time withhold it and lead to disorientation. How can I cause slight confusion by different ways of combining drawing and text and this way involving the viewer because they need to find their own explications for the image? I am interested in the gap between text and image and how I can make use of it.

A line is very ambiguous: on one side, it is very abstract and it can be read by different people in very different ways, depending on what they know and what they recognize. And at the same time a line is very concrete, it is either there – or it is not there. So it is at the same time unavoidable and difficult to create images that leave space for more than one interpretation.

Images – and drawings in particular – are being recognized and interpreted differently by different people, depending on a variety of factors such as the context of viewing and on the experience of looking the viewers have. I am interested in who interprets which visual information in which way.

Looking at the drawings, reading the text in the image the viewer try to make a connection between the two – a connection that did not initially exist. Trying to understand then does not lead to any one particular place, the images are not easily consumable and the viewer are drawn into finding their own explication of what the text has to do with the image.