Pages from the Codex Theonicz
18 July 2024 - 9 December 2024
Curator:
Artist(s): Katie Theodorus
Location: Niddrie Library
In this exhibition, artist Katie Theodorus draws inspiration from Medieval manuscripts, particularly the enigmatic Voynich Manuscript. Featuring an indecipherable script, the Voynich Manuscript has confounded historical minds attempting translation. Taking this mystery as the departure point for the exhibition, Katie presents a new and imagined Codex in ‘Theonicz’, an invented alphabet. Unreadable yet vaguely familiar, it reflects today's challenge of interpreting vast amounts of information. The drawings portray plants, maps, and peculiar animals. Deciphering this knowledge requires great effort, highlighting a nostalgia for dedicated learning and scholarship pre-dating the digital age.
Katie Theodorus is a self-taught emerging artist. A chance encounter in 2016 led to collaborations with fellow artists and the opportunity to participate in her first group show the following year. She finds inspiration in sources as varied as internet culture, nature, history, dreams and spirituality, as well as her imagined life as an archivist. Many of her works act as medicine, reconciling her experiences as neurodiverse, large-bodied, mentally ill and chronically ill.
Her love of learning leads her to constantly experiment with new media and forms of expression, including paint, watercolour, printmaking, crochet, embroidery, found objects, and film. In the last few years, her practice has focussed on examining consumerism, the nature of work, and the decreasing relevance of facts in a post-truth world.