blots (from the waterlily series)

These are digital enlargements of blotted text, writing done with ink that I blotted with blotting paper. Like in a monotype print, the traces of ink originate from pressing blotting paper against paper with freshly written ink that is still wet. The script, which appears in reverse on the blotting paper, is mostly illegible.

The series is called Waterlily, inspired by Monet’s Waterlilies and, I thought, evocative of a codename for a secret organization or a classified file. The rather intimate trace of writing—of outdated kind of writing with ink—becomes obscenely exposed, each would-be-stain turned into a character of a new kind of story. The illegible marks defy any effort to be deciphered. In fact, a little like the ink blots of Rohrschach tests, their interpretation—ranging from tattoos to blood stains—depends on the person viewing them.