The Colony Diary in Nika Language
One day while googling my name, I came across A Nika-English Dictionary. The Nika language was one of the tribal languages spoken in southeast Kenya. The dictionary was compiled by the missionary Johann Ludwig Krapf and published in 1887 by the Church Missionary Society in London (eight years later Kenya was declared an English protectorate and later a British colony).
A good month after the accidental discovery of the dictionary, I was invited to an art colony in a bilingual Austrian village near the Slovenian border. This is how The Colony Diary in Nika Language was born. I wrote the diary of my stay in the art colony in Nika language and accompanied it with drawings of the environment in which I lived and worked for six days.
The Colony Diary in Nika Language certainly contains grammatical errors and possibly even nonsense. In fact, I can not be entirely sure what I really wrote and whether anyone can read or understand it.
2019
Shellac based ink, paper from a notebook, sewing thread, passe-partout, pencil, glass, Nika-English dictionary
Gorše Gallery, SPD Kočna, Suetschach/Sveče, Austria
38. Malerwoche
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