In Coral Dictionary: An Interpretation Performance, artist and nature linguist Chang Yuchen will share her poetic investigation into coral bodies: their shape, texture, propensity, and more. Event attendees will be invited to exercise their own interpretation of these marine creatures and build their own language with nature. The second half of the evening will feature a conversation between Alyssa Velazquez, assistant curator, Carnegie Museum of Art, and Yuchen, during which they will discuss the 216 words that Yuchen has created from her work with the fragments of corals.

This performance is part of the Pittsburgh Satellite Reef’s public programming which offers artistic practice as a form that expands our human connection to the ecology of coral reefs and the ecosystems we are a part of.

“In Bahasa Melayu, the word for coral is karang; while the verb mengarang derived from it, means to compose, to arrange, to weave and to create. After looking at corals closely under and above the water closely for months, I start to comprehend and get it: it’s the shape of coral that describes structure, classification and gradual formation, the porousness communicates endurance, and the unfathomable otherness of marine creature, the dim and yet wild colors, suggesting some sort of fictional fabrication – I am composing a language with corals, I’m creating a feral literacy. I arrange the relationship among shape, sound and meaning, I weave a web that preys on name, thing, soul.” – Chang Yuchen

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