Transatlantic correspondence: The calligraphic traces of Emilia Beatriz and Sofía Gallisá Muriente

For Puerto Rican Glasgow-based artist Emilia Beatriz (they/elle), “lived” spaces are not necessarily defined in terms of geographic proximity. Elsewhere they have reframed diasporic experience in relation to what they call “‘entangled’ action at a distance,” or a “non-local connection, an awareness and experience that is crossing borders.” This essay explores the possibility of dialogue across the Global North and South, but also the troubled nature implied in such conversations. Taking as a point of departure the late 1960s and early seventies epistolary correspondence between the renowned Puerto Rican graphic artist and calligrapher, Lorenzo Homar, and the Scottish calligrapher and academic, Stuart Barrie, the author analyzes the work of Emilia Beatriz and fellow Puerto Rican artist Sofía Gallisá Muriente, by focusing on the arresting artwork and audiovisual constellation declarations on soil and honey (2019), including its subsequent adaptations and iterations. The author demonstrates how writing in these installation pieces extends across varied organic and inorganic matter, from moss and peat, to ice and salt. Closing with analyses of Henry Raeburn’s painting, The Reverend Robert Walker (1755–1808) Skating on Duddingston Loch (c. 1795), and Homar’s print, Unicornio en la Isla (Unicorn on the island; 1965–66), the author demonstrates how writing, language, and speech materialize the corrosive and dislocating forces of colonialism, empire, and militarism. She argues that, in these exemplary works, language and the creative deployment of words, text, and writing, broadly understood, serve to create a “space” of collective mourning—and potentially collective healing. Here, mourning is understood as a collective and restorative ritual in relation to loss.