This project seeks to capture the complex field within which language operates. It considers language in relation to geography and as an archaeological agent, one that presumes continuity across historically unsettled terrains; its role in shaping identity and the narratives of belonging that emerge through it; the ruptures produced by experiences of movement and the hybrid codes of understanding that exceed institutional dictionaries. Lingua franca emerges as a means of communication developed intuitively between travellers, merchants and sailors, producing linguistic cartographies that depart from national imaginaries. At the same time, it is considered in its colonial formations, as a linguistic structure through which discipline and authority are established and exercised. Mother tongue appears as affect, as well as a mechanism through which cognitive and emotional registers are formed. The project also considers the somatics of language: how words are stored in the body and how the body, in turn, navigates expression through space. The tongue is also a body part. Stuttering and numbness emerge as conditions of being ‘at a loss for words’, and as possible effects of personal or collective trauma. Within a contemporary condition of pervasive fragmentation, can language be understood as an assemblage of semantics and social grammars? Translation emerges as a contemporary field of mediation and agency, extending towards the shifting dictionaries of technology and ecology.
Lexciety Perlustance, Pati Vardhami , 2025, digital collage
Pati Vardhami is a curator and theorist. Born in Tirana, Albania, she is based in Athens, Greece. She studied Social Studies at City University and Contemporary Art Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London. She subsequently held assistant roles at Frieze Projects and Talks, the Hayward Gallery, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) and Melas Martinos. Her current practice focuses on developing a curatorial and theoretical register for migrant lived experience, examining the conditions that emerge at its intersections with gender discourse. She has collaborated across disciplines with institutions and organisations including Tavros art space and the Archives of Contemporary Social History (ASKI) in Athens, and has participated in exhibitions organised by NEON, among others. Her writing has been published in art and critical publications, including the magazine of the National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens (EMST) and the Temporary Academy of Arts (PAT). She regularly leads exhibition tours in Albanian at visual arts institutions in Athens and has participated as a panellist in numerous public discussions addressing displacement and gender, most recently at the Women of the World Festival (WOW) at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC). In 2026, she was selected as an ARTWORKS Grantee.