Artwork Information
Kaiser Irfan
The Language of the Birds, 2025
Video
1 minute 16 seconds
Identity is deeply intertwined with language; the way we speak, write, and
interpret information shapes our understanding of the world around us. Having
grown up within both Eastern and Western cultural frameworks, I often find
myself navigating a liminal space—belonging to both, yet wholly to neither. This
tension informs my exploration through asemic writing: a form of open,
abstract mark-making that resists fixed meaning and reflects the shifting
nature of identity.
The language of the birds refers to a collective historical myth regarding the
transmission of divine knowledge through a coded language. This work explores
this myth through asemic calligraphic gesture and writing, the writing content
is open ended, abstract and left to the viewers own interpretation.
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Artwork Information
Kaiser Irfan
The Language of the Birds, 2025
Mixed Media on Journal
6 x 9 Inches
50 pages
These journals document and archive four months of daily journaling,
consisting of sporadic, energetic, and spontaneous “writings” and mark
making. Some marks resemble scripts, paragraphs, or ancient languages; others
echo star maps, calligraphy, cartographic lines and graffiti-like scrawls.
These marks are described as “asemic,” meaning they carry no fixed semantic
meaning. They are abstract in nature. They are unrestricted and open to
multiple interpretations. These marks essentially transcend the need for
concrete translation or conventional understanding.This repetitive, daily
practice can be viewed through multiple lenses. It may be seen as a form of
deep subconscious expression of emotion, sentiment, feeling, and energy. From
another angle, it may be interpreted as cathartic or therapeutic, reflecting a
desire to communicate and connect with both the world around me and the
world within. Finally from a sociocultural perspective, this work can be read as
an exploration of identity. The work teeters between understanding and
obscurity and becomes a subtle metaphor for the in-betweenness often
experienced by members of the diaspora community
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