English that looks like Chinese - Square word calligraphy

Hi!

I went to the museum for team building, and found an unexpected interesting art exhibition of Xubing, who made an interesting link called square word calligraphy between Chinese calligraphy and English. The exhibition shows his effort in creating “pseudo” but universal language based on the commonality of visual communication. It's so intuitive and beautiful. I can't wait to share with you guys!

Quick Lesson

In order to see whats actually going on, it's a good idea to see how Chinese characters are actually constructed.

In short, each complex character is built up from a selection of 189 simpler parts called 'radicals' (214 in traditional). Many of these radicals are very straight forward, with just one or two strokes like a simple English letter. These basically get crammed together in a variety of ways to imply both sound and meaning, and a word is born.

The form on the top right, the 'alphabet'

So the calligraphy on the left is actually the english word Men, the right one is Nursery.

I got to practice in the museum with the water paper calligraphy. It was so fun and hard to control.(My boss came up to me, took a look and said: it's a fail lol)

They exhibited part of a book that's written using only emoticons too.

Bought a set of couplet before I left for the upcoming Chinese new year!

Xu Bing’s Square Word Calligraphy: Gold from the Stone

The piece is actually square word calligraphy of the poem by Sissay Lemn:

Can’t sell a leaf to a tree
Nor the wind to the atmosphere
I know where I’m meant to be
And I can’t be satisfied here.

I really love the way it combines the aesthetic of Chinese calligraphy and English meaning. With the alphabet, you can basically make up any new Chinese-English word you want :)

Thanks for reading!