CORRESPONDING PROPOSITIONS: LYGIA CLARK AND DAVID MEDALLA

Abstract

ABSTRACT______This essay explores a mid-1960s dialogue as it unfolded between two artists from opposite ends of the world: Lygia Clark from Brazil and David Medalla, originally from the Philippines.
Through the London-based gallery Signals and its newsbulletin, they became catalysts for each other’s work. Medalla, active not only as a kinetic artist but also as a writer, poet, and editor, played a key role in staging Lygia Clark’s work in London and mediating it for an international audience. In turn, Clark offered direction to the younger artist by addressing a mode of art-making that challenges binary thinking and fosters audience participation. By closely examining both artist-writers’ use of language — pragmatic, imaginative, and experimental — correspondences in their practices and thinking emerge, revealing how their early efforts to expand and complicate the notion of authorship were grounded in theory and supported by the possibilities of the artists’ magazine.