MARIA NYMFIADI

Participatory Art Project  

Collaboration with Curator Gelly Gryntaki  

 

The Worldblend project focused on language diversity and the role of local libraries in multicultural societies. This project took place at the Willesden Green Library in the London Borough of Brent, which is the second most ethnically diverse borough in the country, with 130 different languages spoken.

 

Visitors to the gallery were invited to participate by sharing their favorite excerpts from library books, writing these excerpts on paper that covered the gallery walls in their native languages. Additionally, an open call on Facebook encouraged people to contribute by handwriting parts of their favorite texts in their languages and sending us photos of these texts. The submitted images were then printed and exhibited on the walls of the exhibition space.

 

During the exhibition, we facilitated two workshops on "Reading Together: Introduction to the Therapeutic Aspects of Shared Reading," conducted by Christiana Mygdali. Furthermore, the artist organised a visit from pupils at Sudbury Primary School, who were eager to participate in the project.

 

It was truly a world-blend experience; we recognized about 40 languages, including: Arabic, Albanian, Armenian, Basque, Bavarian, Castilian Spanish, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Farsi, Filipino, French, Georgian, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Ibo, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Odia, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Sanskrit, Sinhala, Somali, Turkish, Urdu, Welsh, as well as languages from Eritrea and Uganda, alongside many creative scribbles from our younger participants.

 

The administration of Willesden Green Library reported that approximately 5,000 people visited the gallery space.  

 

Willesden Green Library exhibition space

12/03/16 - 20/04/16, Brent, London