JIWA - ZIEL - SOUL
3 giclee prints from the series BUKU-BOEK-BOOK (108 four letter word images in Indonesian, Dutch and English).
What can you say with four letters? Gracia Khouw is fascinated by four-letter words. Concise words that refer to objects or people, as well as words that convey feelings or abstract concepts. The four-letter words symbolize fast, compact, efficient and standard, appropriate to our times. She began collecting the words starting in 2017; first the English ones and from 2022 the search has expanded to include Dutch and Indonesian words, the languages she is at home in.
What is a word image? The word functions as an architectural framework, as four letters that together mean something. At the same time, she approaches letters as signs made up of horizontals, verticals and curves. In the arrangements of thick and thin lines and of colored surfaces, she is concerned with the interaction with the residual space and mutual coherence. You experience a tipping point between word and image, meaning and form.
How do the three languages come together? Inside the collection, Khouw found 36 words where the meanings coincide; they are the starting point for new word images, which have been executed as giclée prints in different formats and for animations. Also released is the publication BUKU-BOEK-BOOK.