Art as a Second Language

Drawing is a translation of all my voices and words — an attempt to draw nothing

I write to fill the page, preferably with nothing.

This ambition was in me before I could write. I grew up in a family of refugees speaking Russian, a language that, as my teachers and classmates took pains to remind me, did not belong to me. Over time, it became almost exclusively the language of abuse — only the more perverse of Russian writers (Gogol, Bely, Kharms) could break and rearrange it into new shapes that were at odds with spoken (heard, rather) language.

English, then, came as an escape, a secret code shared between me and no one — not even English speakers, at least not in the form it took through misheard lyrics, approximated words, and half-digested novels. It was a language that could write me, and not the other way.

In Russian, I don’t write at all — if pressed, I will write in English and translate afterward. And when I write in English, it comes as a transcription. Who does the writing, I’m not exactly sure — I think there are a few of them, a family perhaps, some of them aren’t so great, others are getting better, but none of them is me. This is an obvious lie I’d like to keep believing.