The Ambivalent Translator: Freeplay in Janice Gurney’s Punctuation in Translation

This essay examines the artwork of Toronto-based artist Janice Gurney, focusing on her use of text and punctuation in her artwork; her work is specifically examined in relation to Derrida’s notion of freeplay. Focusing on artists who are part of Gurney’s social network, I trace a brief history of the use of text and textual elements within contemporary Canadian art, connecting this history to Gurney’s use of text as an ambivalent act of historical translation. The focus of this text is an examination of Gurney’s use of punctuation from The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius in her new series of paintings titled Punctuation in Translation. Each of Gurney’s paintings represent a single translation of Marcus Aurelius, in which only the punctuation is reproduced, eliminating the words and in this way she presents Aurelius not through the presence of his words in translation, but through their absence. Gurney revels in the never-ending Derridian freeplay of translation and contextualization that occurs with each and every reading of her artwork.