Artist's Statement

My text-based drawings, sculptural objects, and multimedia works stem from my interest in our relationship with the physicality of language. A set of marks makes a letter, letters arrange into words, strings of words become sentences. Other animals communicate through sound and movement, but text is uniquely human. It is symbol, representing sound and idea. I find it remarkable that across different languages and writing systems, we can still identify unfamiliar marks as text.

I explore text as it relates to the human body. Although it usually lands in a static position, the written word relies on our movement for its existence. I work in additive and reductive mark-making to emphasize motions required to commit a letter to paper or other substrates. I also examine how our movements create vacancies that letters or text once occupied.

I think about where text and language come from, starting in our brains and then moving through our mouths, hands, or other body parts. Language tumbles out as I speak and write each day. Through listening and reading I receive even more. Where does all of this language go? I often think about how language lingers, moves around, and accumulates on top of itself. I am fascinated by imagining how text might exist independently of people, how the letters would move around each other, off of the page, and around different environments.

Yuka Petz Transferred #7, 2019 archival pigment print, 24 x 17 in.

Yuka Petz Transferred #2, 2019archival pigment print, 17 x 24 in.

Yuka Petz Transferred #5, 2019archival pigment print, 17 x 24 in.

Yuka Petz Untitled, 2016embroidery thread on pressure print, 5 in x 9 in.

Yuka Petz Exhale, 2012graphite, overbeaten abaca, steel wire, 7 x 4 x 4 in.

Yuka Petz the most important things are hardest to say because words diminish them (detail), overbeaten abaca, steel wire, variable

Yuka Petz Structural Qualities of Serifs, 2019ink, paper, variable

Yuka Petz Cursive Falling Letters, 2011mixed media, 132 x 48 x 18 in.