Variants of the series are numbered, e.g., Articulation 1, Articulation 2. Articulation 1 has been entered into the Sasol New Signatories 2024 competition.
How the work was created
The artist presented portions of the unfinished work to friends and followers, who interpreted them and suggested how they could be continued. The result is a collection of whimsical representations of social and work situations. Suboptimally designed robots, a common element in the Tania’s work, represent imperfect humans in moments of conflict and collaboration. In some scenes, doing things separately creates calm; in others, driving separate agendas appears chaotic. The opposites are also true: some attempts at doing things together fail, as several robots try to achieve common goals in different ways, while others succeed at working together. These paradoxes also reflect the artist’s experience as an autistic person working among people of varying neurotypes, who sometimes complement each other and at other times misunderstand each other’s modi operandi or simply don’t have the same goals.
About the title
The title, inspired by the theme of the Sasol New Signatures competition, is ambiguous. It refers firstly to the articulated joints of the robots; secondly, to the ways in which some robots express themselves through their body language while others remain inscrutable or at risk of misinterpretation; and thirdly, to the opportunity availed to audiences to mirthfully articulate their thoughts about relatable situations in everyday life, and thereby to understand each other better.