Amy Wike’s work plays with the ideas of translation, interpretation, and the complexities of language. In this body of work, Wike takes small nuances of speech—turns of phrase, words that have multiple meanings, and the varying ways we interpret them—and abstracts them beyond recognition by translating them into Morse code and knitting the transcription row by row with yarn. The resulting amorphous shapes act as visual representations of the intricacies of communication. No matter your language of origin, the viewing experience is equal.
Wike aims to create a space where visitors are challenged to think about language in a way we aren’t used to experiencing it; visually, but also tactilely—by using the knit and purl stitches to represent sounded and silent beats respectively in Morse code, the works are given a braille-like surface.
About the Artist: Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and raised in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, Wike earned my degree in Marketing and Entrepreneurship Management at the University of South Carolina, with a minor in Art History. She moved to Washington, D.C. to pursue a career in the arts, which led to her current position in the communications department at a museum in Washington, D.C. Wike’s current artwork explores visual representations of the intricacies of communication.
Amy Wike: This is a sentence from VisArts at Rockville on Vimeo.