The title of the bookwork I want to introduce today is “Unspken words”. The book is a handmade book produced by a young Chinese designer Naomi, who graduated from the Royal College of Art. She is passionate about combining different media to explore a richer visual language. Her work finds inspiration in the easily overlooked everyday, using forms including illustration, ceramics, sculpture, publications and poetry to explore the nature of “relationships” and to attempt to blur the boundaries between art and life, imagination and reality.
The author says that the book was inspired by a short story by Haruki Murakami called “The Seventh Man”. The author interprets the book from his own point of view. Naomi’s interpretation from her personal point of view is that she thinks the author kept that secret in his heart for so many years and must have found a way to hide it in various places in the house. Maybe in the cupboard, or in the letters that were not sent out. So she made these spaces in the book by hand and paper. When the reader wants to read the book they need to interact with these things in the book, such as taking out the letters from the envelopes, opening the gift boxes with many layers, and so on in order to read the text.
I think this is a very interesting and interactive hand-made book.It shows the designer’s unique understanding of the article “The Seventh Man”.