Terry Boddie

The images that form the Cypher series transitions from Residue of Memory, a twenty-year project which explored the palimpsest of memory. This body of work represents the next step - the manifestation of Nommo in a new land. How are languages and cultures reborn in an alien context under the twin pressures of assimilation and segregation? Can ancient spiritual and cultural maps continue to guide and shape us in a geographically and linguistically distant land?

 

These images explore these questions and posit some answers in a new language wrought with old meanings. Fragments of hair, specifically locks, are used to examine notions of time, its influence on individual and collective growth and how it intersects the development of a language that describes new experiences.  Hair carries not only genetic traits but also the trace of time.  These fragments form both an index of the time it took that hair to grow, and an alphabet that describes the experiences of that time. Although all people, indeed all mammals, have hair, the significance of these hair symbols can only be unlocked by those who have lived through certain times, certain experiences. Let those who have ears to hear, hear.