Burmese Lines
Burmese Lines Family Lines
Having lived in many countries, I often struggle to remember people’s names and spell them correctly. My dyslexia has perhaps strengthened my visual memory over text. As TLL developed, I chose to focus on names as a central thread of research. This chapter includes: Padrin@ Dame un Nombre (The Given Name Project) — an interactive ecological art project linking people with fruit trees in Murcia through naming and symbolic adoption. Family Names — developed during the pandemic while I was living at El Refugio , our family’s country house near my hometown. All family members wrote their names together on a 3m x 10m canvas, reinforcing familial connection through shared mark-making. This chapter explores lineage, memory, ecology, and collective authorship. Family Lines became a point of intersection between visual calligraphy and socially engaged art — showing how writing names together can generate unity.
The Name-Giving Project
Alegria Decklerck’s Portrait | Photograph by Hall’Makwanda | 2021 Jerusalem Gate Names – You Name It!
This chapter draws on toponymy — the study of how names shape our experience of space. I was especially struck by the multilingual street signs in Jerusalem’s Old City, where Hebrew, Arabic, and English are layered together on ceramic tiles. This inspired You Name It based on Jerusalem gates names , a project transforming these multilingual names into calligraphic works. The resulting images abstract the written names into fluid forms, allowing viewers to reinterpret them through their own lenses. The title You Name It reflects on naming as a powerful act — one that defines ownership, memory, and identity. While it cannot resolve political conflict, it offers a poetic gesture toward unity and peace.