Next Wednesday, September 25, at 6:30 p.m., the launching of the book Otras escrituras. Gestures, movements and inscriptions in contemporary art and poetry, by Megumi Andrade Kobayashi. The event, organized by Ediciones UAH and the Art Department of the Universidad Alberto Hurtado, will be attended by the author, philosopher Marcela Rivera and artists Sebastián Barrante and Fernanda Aránguiz.

About the book

Other Writings proposes a journey through the work of a selected group of contemporary artists, poets and calligraphers who have confronted the problem of illegibility in art with particular acuity and sensitivity: Cy Twombly, Henri Michaux, Inoue Yuichi, Mirtha Dermisache and Mira Schendel. What are their efforts to explore the dimensions of the illegible, how does this search dialogue with their respective contexts of creation, how do their writings question our habitual uses of verbal language, are some of the questions that run through these pages.

Despite the notorious contextual and geographical distance of the artists -the United States, France, Japan, Argentina and Brazil- this analysis displays points of convergence, resonances that invite us to perceive in them a shared way of exploring and conceiving writing. Instead of interpreting themes, motifs or characters, the author privileges the movements of the hand, the closeness between different materialities, the confrontation of tools and surfaces of inscription and, most especially, the possible contact between our bodily perception, always ambiguous and irreducible, with that which is presented to us as an image in its resemblance and difference with writing.

Of essential interest to those who seek to observe the possible and impossible relations between visualities and texts, this book will also be of interest to those who explore the production and transmission of meaning beyond the semantic order and the illuminated zone of verbal language.

About the author

Megumi Andrade Kobayashi holds a PhD in American Studies, line Thought and Culture (Institute of Advanced Studies, IDEA, U. of Santiago de Chile), Master in Literature (U. of Chile) and Master in Image Studies (Universidad Alberto Hurtado). She teaches Art Theory and History at the UAH and is an academic and researcher at the Faculty of Arts of the Universidad Finis Terrae, where she directs the “Laboratory of research-creation of artistic publications GPA”. She is one of the founders of La Oficina de la Nada, a research group focused on the links between literature, visual arts and music, and on the curatorship of exhibitions mainly related to books and printed art. In 2023 she published the novel Púa (Overol).