Calligraphy Letters

Have you ever caught yourself amazed by Asian calligraphy letters such as Chinese and Japanese and the way they are so artistically written? Have you ever wondered what the letters really meant and found yourself clueless unless you ask a native (or indeed look up on Google)? Yes, I can say I have, inumerous times, and have gone all the way to describe them as “pretty scribbles”. But what if you were to find out that those “pretty scribbles” are not actually Chinese, but English?!

I have to say it took me a couple of seconds to actually realise the wording on this calligraphy work was in English! Chinese born artist Xu Bing has developed an alphabet with letters of the standard western alphabet and redesigned them to have a look that’s very similar to the chinese alphabet. At a first glance, the brain automatically classifies it as “foreign”, but when you look closely, the letters spell out words in English. Take a look at this calligraphy picture, it spells “Forever”.

This picture was taken from Xu Bing’s official website where you can find out more about the project: http://www.xubing.com