Words Within
[27.06 – 27.09 / 2016 ]
SPRMRKT
As if mastering the art of penning beautiful script isn’t difficult enough, calligrapher and entrepreneur Ruth Tan has taken to bringing words to life by constructing original, movable calligraphy sculptures in her debut exhibition, Words Within, held at SPRMRKT from July to September 2016. The 10-piece installation with its pivoting words and secret messages—some cheeky, some thoughtful—was one of our most interactive exhibitions yet.
What inspired you to create Words Within?
I think language is a wonderful tool for us to express ourselves, and some words trigger associations that we have experienced in our lives. Words Within is an offshoot of that idea that words in themselves could and often do carry meaning in themselves for the speaker/writer and whoever she’s conversing with. It’s also something that fascinates me because I work with letterings and one day I was just wondering about how letters could be expressed as a physical machinery as opposed to just flat and two-dimensional, which is what I often do for weddings, corporate events and in workshops. This curiosity kept bugging me so I decided to marry the two—word associations and movable words—alongside funny quotes I’ve made up or heard before, to delight an audience.
