Egami Etsu - This is Not a Mishearing Game

de Sarthe Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Egami Etsu's first solo exhibition, This Is Not A Mishearing Game opening at de Sarthe Project Space on September 25th.

Language is a means to transmit information, and also an obstacle of information transmitting. Egami Etsu is probing humanity through tracing the origin of language for the purpose of feedback to society. If the failure of Tower of Babel in the Old Testament is attributed to the communicative obstacle between different languages, the mishearing and misunderstanding may lead to more disputes and misfortune. This kind of misfortune may even be misheard and misunderstood again, and thus forms an unresolvable circle.
Egami Etsu's work is a comprehensive one composed by a group of videos of mishearing games displayed on little screens and some videos of social disputes displayed on background walls. From the origin of language, she probes the meaning of communication through these overlapped videos.
A Group of Videos of Mishearing Games displayed on little screens: The little screens hanging on the wall are displaying the videos of mishearing games. The so-called “Mishearing Games” is to communicate by using a language others do not understand, just interpret the meaning of the voice by intuition. This is “MISHEARING” (E.g. The pronunciation of the word “Yada” is similar to that of duck egg in Mandarin or that of “OK” in Sichuan Hua, a dialect of Sichuan Province, China.). Such kind of random results of mishearing is out of expect and always make an embarrassing effect. If this kind of mishearing happens in real world, it may cause a crisis or tragedy.
A Group of Videos of Social Disputes displayed on background walls:Project the image or video of global disputes to background walls on which the group of little video games are hanged. I choose 3
groups of such portfolios. 1) Disputes, indicating the relations between disputes and verbal communication. 2) Some places of historic interest and scenic beauty related to these disputes, and probing people’s opinion to these places. 3) Sea. Probing the disputes, changes and mishearing again from the angle of eternal of heaven and earth.