JOANA P. R. NEVES
Drawn Codes: Urban Notations, Intimate Writings
Frac Picardie - 14 June
DRAWING CODES : URBAN NOTATIONS, INTIMATE WRITINGS
Notation is the act of representing with signs. It is used when verbal language is insufficient. Mathematics, physics, dance and phonetics are all fields that employ notations which are as beautiful as they are mysterious to those who don’t master their codes. In science, think of calculations; in performing arts, notation often represents physical or even sonic movement.
On a personal level, coded writing is often secret. Adolescents invent confidential writings, forging fortuitous communications. The queer community uses symbols to communicate or define itself.
Drawing often revisits writing and creates notations or reinterprets them, lifting the veil onto other realities and the potential for a new world.
When artists seize upon notation to reinvent it, they focus often on its poetic-visual, even revolutionary potential. Jacques Villeglé created his “Alphabet Socio Politique” (begun in 1969) inspired by urban notations, graffiti and amalgamated symbols of revolt. On the other hand, we can also be re-acquainted with abstract works as notations, which then becomes a tool for appreciating art differently.
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Image views: Above–Violaine Lochu, Yannidan, Tekki Shodan, Bassai Dai #1, Bassai Dai #2 (2024); Isabelle Ferreira: Staccato (2025); below–Marianne Mispelaëre, La Marseillaise, performance, and interactive installation (activation 2025).
Oldie but Goodie:
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OUR ANCESTORS BLOOM OVER GROUND
Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, London
With: Lise Duclaux, Maja Escher, Gözde Ilkin, Landra and Barbara Nicholls​
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"I am thinking about the idea of nature and how to destroy it. The constructs of nature, culture, landscape, specimen overpower the stories we tell about life on earth, drastically separating us from it. The ecophilosopher Timothy Morton has described the construct of nature as “the slowest and perhaps most effective weapon of mass destruction yet devised”. The French anthropologist Philippe Descola proposed to go beyond the nature/culture divide (meaning planet / humanity), which is a seemingly insurmountable crack between humans and organic life.
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​I am learning how to “live with the trouble” in the words of Donna Haraway, and how to build upon this new relationship with the world, neither ancestral nor industrial but a hybrid of hopefully the best of both worlds. The notion of reciprocity proposed by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist of the Potawatomi Citizen Nation, seems appropriate. She reminds us that the Apache “root word for land is the same as the word for mind. Gathering roots holds up a mirror between the map in the earth and the map of our minds”. Or, on a more visceral level, “recent research has shown that the smell of humus exerts a physiological effect on humans (...) [it] stimulates the release of the hormone oxytocin, the same chemical that promotes bonding between mother and child, between lovers” (...).
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