ARBITRARY

Arbitrary is a Print Series on Language and Symbol .
This collection of digital prints made directly on antique dictionary pages—each one a deliberate collision between image and definition. Silhouettes of birds, bombs, insects, and mechanical tools are precisely placed over selected words, creating visual tension between the form and the language beneath it. A raven interrupts the definition of “custody.” A bomb blots out “doxology.” A scalpel hovers over “inheritance.”

These juxtapositions are not decorative—they are interrogations. The prints ask whether we define the world through language, or whether language defines and confines us. Each piece becomes a site of quiet friction, where image and text wrestle for meaning, and neither fully wins.

The use of translucent rice paper overlays, subtle color washes, and crisp silhouettes turns each page into a layered document—half archive, half provocation. The work resists literal reading, inviting viewers to confront how symbols acquire power, how definitions shape perception, and how language, like systems, can become a cage disguised as clarity.

This print series is a meditation on inherited meaning. It does not explain. It intervenes. It reclaims. It asks: When did the page stop being blank—and who decided what should be written there?