Problematic Translators
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Clara Chow 2009 Australia
Invitation featuring a digital still from Primary Ballad by Clara Chow, video, 2008
Problematic Translators
Clara Chow
Friday 16 January 2009 to Sunday 08 February 2009
Opening Friday 16 January 2009 Opening night: 16 Jan 2009, 6pm - 9pm
Exhibition times, Fridays 12-6pm, Saturdays & Sundays 12-5pm. Other times by appointment on 0401 183 875
Sydney based Clara Chow opens the 2009 Immersion Therapy program with her first Melbourne show, Problematic Translators.
Clara has produced a combination of video based works and installations which address the inherent problems of translation whilst making comment on contemporary multiculturalism and immigration in Australia.
Sydney based Clara Chow opens the 2009 Immersion Therapy program with her first Melbourne show, Problematic Translators.
Karaoke style videos, pseudo polling booths, Peking Operas and frustrating (and often amusing) translations collide, establishing a visual world in which two cultures struggle to sit side by side, each hampered by ideas and ethos that can never truly be ‘translated’ and clearly articulated for the other.
Exploring notions of identity, translations and the language barrier, Clara’s video based works are simultaneously mocking and compassionate statements about the current state of our own culture, and the current direction of multiculturalism and immigration in Australia.
Among the works is Primary Ballad, an installation in which Clara has created karaoke style videos with an Australiana bent that reflect her views of nationalism and the introduction of the Citizenship Test in Australia in 2007.
By translating original content from English to Cantonese and back in to English again, Clara strips information and lyrical content of its true context, establishing new arbitrary
Location
Immersion Therapy
420 High Street
Northcote
