"On May 24, I received my assignment email: "It's time. To see the work that has been assigned to you to translate, please click the following link. You are allotted 14 days to finish your work and upload it." A few weeks earlier, I had signed up to participate in - a global art project where artists translate another person's work into their own, and then pass their creation along for more artists to interpret."
""The artwork you have been assigned contains and transmits a very specific message. The artworks that came before did the same. Interpret the message you receive and pass it along faithfully with your own art. Trust that if you invest yourself in the process of translation, no matter how abstract your form of art, the message will come through.""
"I translated that message quite literally, using a mix of mediums. I cut and engraved plywood into the shape of a coffin, embroidered an old upholstery sample with flowers and those same words, and glued it all together. The result was a ten-inch-tall 3D wall hanging with an optimistically morbid message of hope."
An artist received an assignment email directing a translation of an assigned work within 14 days as part of a global project where artists reinterpret and pass along artworks. The assigned piece appeared as a dark painting resembling a mummy among tree roots with flowers, a pumpkin, and a rainbow-like aura; the phrase that emerged was "it's never too late." The artist rendered the message literally using plywood, engraving, and embroidered upholstery to create a ten-inch 3D coffin-shaped wall hanging conveying an optimistically morbid hope. The project, Telephone, launches October 10, 2025, with 1,395 works across 930 cities in 65 countries and an interactive digital experience plus in-person events.
Read at Forbes
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