Roni Horn: Rings of Lispector (Agua Viva)

‘Roni Horn: Rings of Lispector (Agua Viva)’ commemorates the artist’s first major solo exhibition in the United Kingdom (2004), documenting the wordplay-filled installation. The publication presents images of the installation’s interconnected rubber floor tiles that featured passages from Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector’s book ‘Agua Viva (Stream of Life),’ translated by feminist theorist and writer Hélène Cixous. Horn arranged these phrases in circular formations, echoing the movement of raindrops on the surface of water. Through this sculpting of language, Horn’s installation embodied a sense of the dialectic between architectural space and poetic force, encouraging viewers to take in the Lispector’s words from above while experiencing the rubber underfoot. The call of Lispector’s shape-shifting writing and Horn’s equally shape-shifting response is explored in the book’s featured text, written by Cixous. She writes that Horn ‘≪captures≫, she fishes. . . . Roni’s hook is drawing; drawing goes fishing for the hidden designs of sentences. Roni goes fishing in Agua Viva. She captures whatever speaks to her in her language, forms of her being she calls Rings.’