Bifidity

This is to certify that the my edition of sculptures entitled BIFIDITY was commenced in October, 2008. There are thirty sculptures in the edition and each is signed and numbered under the base.

The design of BIFIDITY is based on an older, smaller sculpture made as part of the Blind Alphabet Project in 1993. That original piece was made small enough so that it could be picked up and easily handled by a blind person. A bifurcated structure implies a main body that develops or ‘forks’ into two. A bifid structure, on the other hand, implies a knife, axe or any other outside force, bearing down on a main body and parting it in two.

The original sculpture of 1993 consisted only of one piece of wood, cleft into two. The wood was so parted that it remained one solid piece with two members curving sideways from it. The new, 2009, piece is similar in shape, but a wedge-like shape was added to represent the outside force performing the cleaving act.

The original 1993 work made for the Blind Alphabet Project was accompanied the following text as translated into Braille and printed on a plaque:

BIFID, BIFIDATE, BIFIDITY

Something bifid, or bifidate is cleft so that it divides into two parts, some will erroneously say, ‘forked’, like a bifurcated form. If, however, we study the Latin findere that gave rise to bifid, and see that it means ‘cleave’, then bifid assumes its rightful meaning. The word presupposes that a singular substance or form is divided by an outside agency. A fabric, torn by manual force, and the Red Sea, at the time of Moses, parted by divine intervention, are bifid configurations. The two divided parts must seem to have some sense of equality about them. The cleft-tongues of snakes and other reptiles are not really cleft, but bifurcated or forked. They seem to have sprouted their own two bilateral offshoots from within. A cleft-stick is truly bifid. The shape for the BLIND ALPHABET PROJECT was made of a large, singular, rectangular block of Kiaat (Pterocarpus angolensis). It was carved in such a way as to suggest that a knife or such thing had cleaved it down the centre. The two sides, as if by an unseen power, curve outwards, as if they are soft and can yield. The piece was completed on Tuesday, 15 June 1993.