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Natasha Romanova.
The Coming of Winter

A book exploring childhood by Deaf artist Natasha Romanova.

The Coming of Winter is a joint project by V–A–C Press and Deaf artist Natasha Romanova, in which Romanova translates an account of her childhood written by her grandmother into the Russian Sign Language fingerspelling alphabet —a system of one-handed signs representing the letters of the Cyrillic alphabet used widely by Deaf people in everyday communication.

All photos: Ruslan Shavaleev

Natasha Romanova (b. 1992) is a Deaf artist, a 2019 resident of the Garage Museum Studios, and a teacher working with deaf and hard-of-hearing children. Her practice engages with the visual structure of language to transform it into a gestural “script” and addresses themes of identity and embodiment.

This artist’s book does not have an instructional purpose, and what matters is not so much decoding and immersing oneself in the process of reading the dactylics on the surface of the page, but sensing the difference between the flow of the two narratives, noticing something distinct in each of the two worlds. In one of them, spoken language becomes a visual sign; in the other, the image of the visual sign moves from two-dimensional to three-dimensional space. Natasha modifies this process, transferring the final sign-gesture onto the page, playing with the meaning of the text and its perception, lending greater weight to her grandmother’s words and making them more poignant.

— Vladislav Kolesnikov, “On the Edition”

In The Coming of Winter, fingerspelling lays the foundation for a visual narrative, a rare intersection of sign language and visual art. Signed speech cannot normally be captured in written form, but Romanova expands the possibilities of expression by creating handwritten “dactilemes.” The tactile, “handmade” quality of this edition is emphasised by its format—an A4 notebook bound with metal rings.

The Coming of Winter concludes with an afterword by Vladislav Kolesnikov, the hard-of-hearing Curator of Programmes for the Deaf Community at GES-2 House of Culture and V–A–C Foundation. Kolsenikov’s text analyses Romanova’s artistic practice and use of the fingerspelling alphabet as a tool for exploring the boundaries of language and the experience of deafness. Romanova’s work transforms the fingerspelling alphabet into an artistic form at the intersection of personal memory and new modes of communication.

This project is a rare example of the use of the Russian Sign Language fingerspelling alphabet in visual art and book publishing. It raises questions about the visibility of the deaf community, sign language as an expression of identity, and the possible forms that dialogue between generations and people with different backgrounds can take.

Managing Editor
Arina Fartukh

Editors
Vyacheslav Nemirov
Tamara Shatula

Design and Layout
Maria Vinogradova

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