A is for Alam (pen): the object, the language, the archive 2022

North Rotunda, State Library of Victoria. Commissioned for Handmade Universe exhibition

Click the link below to view the video to the artist book

Photographer: Christian Capurro

Deanna Hitti challenges the history of the Western gaze in this new installation. Her striking array of cyanotype prints transforms more than 100 images from French Orientalist paintings made during the early period of colonialism. In response to these exoticised Western views of Middle Eastern culture, Deanna has overprinted objects and text she associates with her Lebanese heritage and her family life in Australia. By overlaying symbols from her personal and cultural experience, she focuses her attention to the misrepresentations from the past while prompting reflection on how we relate to our own cultures and cultural difference in current times.

 Deanna Hitti's lebanese heritage is integral to her art practice. Her prints and artist books draw on her experience of growing up in Australia with strong Lebanese traditions in the family home, navigating what she describes as 'living in two cultures simultaneously'.

 Deanna speacialises in cyanotype printing, a method of reproduction that was invented in the 19th century. Inspired by the long history of printing and publishing, she presents her cyanotypes as large installations of 'floating pages' that fold down into books.

 This new work consists of 156 double-sided cyanotypes that form three distinct volumes of prints: the objects, the language and the archive. The object documents and educational textbook that Deanna studied while learning the Arabic alphabet, Arabic being her first language. The language reproduces Arabic instructions for writing English letters and numerals, recalling Deanna's preperation for starting school. The archive presents a collection of objects that correspond to each letter of the alphabet and bring to life the exchange of language, knowledge and beliefs that inform Deanna's identity.

Linda Short, curator Handmade Universe exhibition, State Library of Victoria