The Color of Words

Searching around yesterday for words, phrases and sentences to use in a piece I'm working on, and feeling a bit like a would be William Burroughs with my love of cut up text, I came across this beautiful work by Wosene Worke Kosrof on one of my favorite blogs I Love Typography. [which led me to the amazing site called Inscribing Meaning, Writing and Graphic Systems in African Art] Drawing upon Ethiopian graphic systems, liturgical symbols and architectural forms as well as pan-African motifs, the artist produces richly colored and detailed canvases. Wosene's fascination with words and the seductive forms of written signs are contemplated alongside other investigations of language and identity within modern histories of Africa. In his Color of Words series, Wosene blends color and shapes, the verbal and the visual, into lively compositions that celebrate the richness of language. Wosene Worke Kosrof considers his recent works to be investigations into a new alphabet, one that employs a vocabulary of signs and symbols to link past with present, and Africa with the diaspora in which he works and lives.

The Color of Words IX