native tongues defiant

Native tongues defiant is a project that focuses on the personal relationship between indigenous identity and language through interviews and handwriting examples. The publication features interviews with 7 people who all identify as indigenous and are involved in different forms of linguistic activism.

The visual part of the project focuses on the tradition of cursive writing in Cyrillic, taught to every child in Russia. It is taught by filling in copybooks, where the specific font has to be traced, and certain constraints are placed on children to have a very specific style as their handwriting. This overlaps with Cyrillization, where all indigenous languages in Russia use Cyrillic alphabet. The copybooks are also referenced in the project by using the grid called “oblique line” which is something used as a guide to tilt the letters while writing.

The installation uses laser cut samples of handwriting sampled from the interviewees, to make the languages physical and have the actual shape and form while taking space. The pieces use both the “perfect” font that is usually printed in the copybooks as example, and the handwriting samples to create a contrast between “the rule” and a personalized writing done by human hand.