Graphos

Graphos was commissioned by MONA for On the Origin of Art, the largest exhibition in the history of this internationally acclaimed museum. The work responds to neuro-biologist Mark Changizi’s ideas about how writing systems have evolved through 'nature harnessing', a claim that reading and writing are not instinctual, but harnessed from nature through cultural selection. Graphos represents Changizi's theories by creating an all-encompassing environment constructed entirely from wood. It is accompanied by a sound track that references Changizi’s theory about the development of spoken language, and is dominated by 3 large black objects that evoke the minimalist sculptures of Robert Morris and Donald Judd, and Changizi's idea that writing has evolved from seeing opaque objects in nature in relationship to each other. The work forges connections between the words of French author Marguerite Duras (1914–1996) and Changizi, who both claim that writing is everywhere, and offers viewers an opportunity to question their own relationship to the emergence of language from the world around us. To Ozolins’ knowledge, Changizi’s ideas have not previously been interpreted through visual art.