Joyce Lyon - Found in Translation

 

Hidden away in the southern tip of Umbria, Italy is the walled medieval town of Otricoli.  Artist Joyce Lyon has made extended visits there over the last several years.  The relationships she has developed with the residents of the town and the conversations they’ve had across the differences of language and life experience have inspired a new body of work: Found in Translation.

Public announcements are still posted in small Italian towns like Otricoli.  These annunci convey information about community events, deaths, and political campaigns.  The artist has created a series of digital collages or broadsides, which combine images and text.  Each page presents an encounter or event and reflects upon these social and cultural interactions.

As a whole, the sequence of pagine / pages narrates the process of Lyon’s initiation into the life of a small Italian town and considers the possibilities and limitations of what can be learned through linguistic and cultural translation.

Joyce Lyon’s drawings and combinations of digital imagery and text are concerned with the experience and representation of place.  She has made work about the known and the unknown in her garden at night (Approaches to the Garden) and about her attempts to understand and accept the limitations to understanding her father’s experience of the Holocaust (Conversations with Rzeszow).  In a body of work related to Found in Translation, Lyon has made graphite and oilbar drawings of Italian gardens.  Her work has been exhibited and collected nationally and internationally.  Lyon is a recipient of three Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowships and has participated in a Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad in Poland. She is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Minnesota.