UNTIL THE WORD IS GONE
OUTDOOR INSTALLATION BY ARTIST SERGEY KATRAN AT WOLFSON COLLEGE, OXFORD

Experimental outdoor installation Until the Word is Gone created by artist Sergey Katran and curated by Irene Kukota. The exhibition opens on Wednesday, 24 November 2021 and will remain on display in the college gardens for almost a year (until 23 October 2022).

Until the Word is Gone features twenty-six terracotta sculptures created between 2016 -2021 and embodying sound waves of the word “art,” uttered in dead, endangered and living languages (among them are Wichita USA, Pushtu, Gujarati, Finnish, Japanese, Tibetan, Armenian, French, Kazakh, Baoulé, Arabic, Crimean Tatar, Tangut, Nabati, Hebrew, Turkish, Hebrew, German, English, Old Icelandic and many others). A similar installation is on permanent display in Normandy at Les Jardins d’ Étretat, overlooking Monet’s picturesque cliffs, which are listed as UNESCO World Heritage view.

The installation is an in-depth cross-disciplinary project at the intersection of linguistics, art, ethnography and anthropology. It is an exploration of the nature of human language and origins of human civilisation.