Tags
art, Artist Statement, cognition, computer, Computer Program, Culture, Experiment, Identity, Immigration, Language, Mathematics, mind, reaction time, Reka Szepesvari, thinking
My work is fuelled by my need to explore my cultural identity as a Hungarian immigrant living in Canada. Employing various processes across diverse media, my work as a collective functions as a cumulative self-portrait. My Thoughts Exactly was inspired by the strange experience of dreaming in English for the very first time. I consider that night, when the English language entered my unconscious mind, the marker for becoming bilingual.
Linguists acknowledge that language influences thinking. This principle of linguistic relativity suggests that we cannot think without language. Can we then think of ideas our language does not name? And if thought is a consequence of language, people living in a new place must think differently from the rest of the population. But sooner or later immigrants acquire the common tongue of their new home and gradually lose their native language. So how does this shift in language alter the way they think? Such cognitive processes of the mind remain mysterious today. My Thoughts Exactly takes on the challenge of documenting the duration of thought in different languages through the use of a computer program that measures the reaction time to certain images. The paintings are representations of this data. And, as such, they function as portraits. Language becomes portraiture, reflecting upon its unique and vital role in our lives.