Artist’s statement:

Hi, my name is Gerlins Marcano, and I was the recent recipient of the Alex Cohn Grant. With this grant, I spent six weeks in Amman, Jordan where I studied Arabic with students from all over the world. Language builds bridges – it opens doors to other cultures and people’s hearts. I wanted to experience this on my own and bring back any knowledge I gained to share with the Beaver community through the Nancy Lincoln Gallery.

With the gallery, I hoped to recreated the disorientation of being abroad by including multiple languages broadcast at the same time. These are all the languages that I am becoming fluent in. In a way, it’s a multi-sensory depiction of my journey through languages. In the gallery is an empty table where I invite anyone who speaks, or is learning to speak, another language to sit down and converse. It’s a celebration of language.