Past Exhibitions
Eve yearns to return to a primordial state when the misunderstandings caused by words no longer stand between her and the rest of creation. So she unnames all the animals, from the sea otters to the bees. When she's done, she marvels on how they feel ‘far closer than when their names had stood between myself and them like a clear barrier.’
- Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees, referencing the Ursula K. Le Guin short story “She Unnames Them”*
* The New Yorker, 21 January 1985
Virtual Vocables Workshop: Add Your Voice
Saturday, September 4, 11 AM
In Falling into Language: A Travelogue, Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees creates a mythical travelogue exploring a shared cosmic ancestry that connects us beyond the constraints of spoken and written language. TwoTrees’ immersive installation of paintings, soundscapes, and video feature contemporary vocables (a sequence of sounds and syllables without literal meaning) created in collaboration with musicians from Vermont, India and Japan. TwoTrees describes Falling into Language: A Travelogue as a visual manifestation of her experience engaging with ceremonial vocables that are deeply rooted in the oral tradition of her mixed Native American and African heritage.
Beginning her exploration through automatic writing, drawings, paintings and then sound, TwoTrees discovered a new, creative route to an unseen language – ultimately finding herself falling into a language that defied differentiation or separation. Combining score and imagery to create an immersive environment of visual vocables, Falling into Language: A Travelogue reveals the power of voice and imagery to reconnect us to an interdependent and vibrant world.
The Artist recognizes the following musicians for their collaboration in the creation of Falling into Language: A Travelogue: Gideon Crevoshay, Yuji Nakagawa, Shruthi Veena Vishwanath, and Heidi Wilson.
Image credit: Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees, Falling Into Language: A Travelogue, 2021, video still
Artist Talk
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BCA Exhibitions are funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and Vermont Arts Council
Burlington City Arts is supported in part by the New England Foundation for the Arts through the New England Arts Resilience Fund, part of the United States Regional Arts Resilience Fund, an initiative of the U.S. Regional Arts Organizations and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with major funding from the federal CARES Act from the National Endowment for the Arts, and by the Vermont Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.
