Elvis and Saddam Series. Material: Black ink on paper; Format: 32 x 26 cm

In regards to textual translation, the term “fidelity” denotes the extent to which a translation accurately renders the meaning of the source text without distortion. Transparency, on the other hand, is the extent to which a translation appears to a native speaker of the target language to have originally been written in that language, and conforms to its grammar, syntax and idiom. A translation that meets the first criterion is said to be “faithful;” a translation that meets the second, “idiomatic.” Fidelity (or faithfulness) and transparency, dual ideals in translation, are often at odds. A 17th-century French critic coined the phrase “les belles infidèles” to suggest that translations, like women, can be either faithful or beautiful, but not both. Are the beautiful and the real mutually exclusive?

This group of drawings explores the juncture of reality and its representation through the theme of idealized, and/or imaginary places, using familiar imagery to associate seemingly disparate utopian narratives. According to the Freudian concept of the uncanny (Das Unheimliche-- literally, “un-home-ly”), when one encounters a subject that is familiar yet strange, a certain amount of cognitive dissonance results due to the simultaneous yet contradictory feelings of attraction and repulsion. In the uncanny spaces of the “High Fidelity” series, a similar dissonance can be felt reverberating between reality and fiction, between reality and intention, and between reality and truth, which, we must be reminded, are not necessarily the same.