Babel Rebuilt

The exhibition moulds its concept on the original Tower of Babel — a Biblical story of humanity’s attempt to build a tower to heaven, yet failing and collapsing into scattered chaos — then pays homage to Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles’ 2001 Babel tower, a contemporary reinterpretation of the allegory through radios set to intermingling radio waves all across the world, showcasing the disorder of language.

 A reinterpretation of its own, each artwork from Babel Rebuilt represents an interchangeable method of communication, inviting themes of manual labour, the food we eat, and the body. As an artist-run curatorial group that often centres their work around provoking dialogue, Green Grammar harnesses both the abstract and literal, as the exhibition prevails in its pursuit for connection. “The collapse of the Tower of Babel reveals an eternal human dilemma. It symbolises the limits of communication: we long to understand, yet are defined by difference,” the artist statement proclaims. “We pursue unity, yet exist through diversity… When language fails, we attempt to speak through the senses”. 

A pile of hand-shaped, ceramic bones lies at the entrance, as part of Lily Ye Zhang’s She Fetched sculpture that examines instinctual retrieval behaviours in relation to the natural and animalistic. Smooth and rigid, each bone invites tactile exploration, using touch for discovery, going beyond the restrictions of just sight alone. Ye Zhang’s work is a physical language. 

Meanwhile, Xirong Gui’s porcelain structure Chorus balances in the air held by transparent strings, an instrument-shaped sculpture emitting soft music from internal speakers that represents communication created through non-verbal sound. The language of music is a powerful one, moving throughout self-reflective and interpersonal relationships. 

Having been handed a tiny, twisted rope made out of bread by the curators, the accompanying sculpture seems to serve as a pastiche of the tower for Rebread Babel by Moyu Yang and Zhenzhen. A steel wire archway holds miniature bread loaves, intricately shaped and patterned representing how humans connect and communicate through food. The simplicity and comfort from bread strips things back, also touching on the metaphorical nature of the bread loaf in biblical references. Another bread structure resembling the Christian cross embedded with plastic eyes hangs on the wall, further honing in on this message.

Perhaps the most literal of artworks is Tianhui Tao’s README, a collage-like moving image video featuring five different shots in one frame, each of them focused on hands touching assorted objects personified as “self-narrating entities". Two voiceovers overlap — one in English and one in Japanese — obscuring the voices into something else entirely, similarly to how Babel disrupted language altogether. “When language becomes unreadable, listening, viewing, and sensing emerge as new points of entry, allowing meaning to be rebuilt through bodily perception, misreading, and immersion”, says Tao. 

Then at the UNTITLED gallery in Berlin until February 8th, Babel Rebuilt continued its exploration of the concept of communication. In Berlin ran a creative translation that includes new artists and repeats some from the London show. Babel Rebuilt in Berlin was a collaboration with Local Gr0up, described by the curators as “a Ukraine-based platform founded in 2021, dedicated to presenting contemporary experimental practices and fostering cross-border connections. Its activities span publications, film screenings, and exhibitions, evolving from Local Stickerbook — a sticker-based magazine that laid the groundwork for the platform. Local Gr0up’s publications function as post-internet archives, using playful and accessible formats to document emerging Ukrainian and global subcultures, reflecting a generation negotiating identity and technology within an accelerated, hyper-mediated present.” Both are fascinating, thought-provoking exhibitions. 

London Artists Jing Hsu, Kuba Stepien, Rory Bakker-Marshall, Louise Wan, Roman Vaughan-Williams, Tianhui Tao, Xiaoze Zhang, Luna Meng, Samuel Colley-Hunt, Ben Grosse-Johannboecke, Benjamin Tong, Xirong Gui, Xiaohan Luo, Xinyi Xu, Yuchen Wu, Rockforth Datuin, Carolin Meyer, Yihao Zhang, Lily Ye Zhang, Xinyu Gao, Moyu Yang, Zhen Zhen

Berlin Artists Luka Naujoks, Georgia Salmond, Denys Kulikov, Javier Vargas (p0brediabla), Xinyue Ma, Alexander Collinson, Xinhan Yu, Sibyl Guo, Shuang Sera Yang, Yihao Zhang, Yu Hao, Yan Yassin, Kuangyi Lu, Xiaohan Luo, Yilun Liu, Xinyi Xu