Artist: Cristina de Almeida; Brasil / USA

Work: Containing the Navigation

In 1578, approximately 20 years after returning from his trip to the New World, the Huguenot Jean de Lery published his famous memoir, History of a Voyage to the Land of Brasil. Considered a milestone of travel literature, Lery’s book is simultaneously ethnography, adventure story, and religious diatribe. In it, he astutely moves from one genre to another while immersing the reader in the universe of his epoch through these multiple verbal perspectives. For Lery, Brasil was above all a rhetorical figure, the trope of a lost paradise nostalgically, yet systematically, invoked to define his own disappointment with European civilization.

This book is a re-reading and mapping of some of the many dimensions of Lery’s text. Through a series of diagrams and charts, it explores the ways the author framed his arguments and attempts to visually translate these verbal strategies. Each double spread corresponds to a specific chapter in the original text and the maps were developed using at least one of four interpretation criteria: the physical, based on his detailed descriptions of places and creatures; the linguistic, based on the discursive patterns found in his prose; the sequential, based on the temporal dimension of the plot; and the referential, based on the relationship between author and subject.

Artist book: digital prints on Cougar Text, French-fold, with Japanese binding. Dimensions are 10 x 10 x 0.5 inches (254 x 254 x 12.7 mm). 46 pages. Single edition, not for sale.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, Cristina de Almeida moved to the United States to pursue graduate studies in visual communication and typography. Her experimental books have been exhibited at venues across the United States and abroad, including Canada, Great Britain, and Australia. She currently teaches both design history and project-based design courses at Western Washington University, in Bellingham, Washington State.

CONTACTS

Email: cristina.dealmeida@wwu.edu

Here is a selection of images of works in the exhibition. Scroll down this page for comprehensive individual Artist submissions, including descriptions of their work, more images, artists’ statements and contact details.