The document describes Katya Oicherman's art installations "Renderings of Writings" (2004) and "Descriptions of Wanderings" (2005). The installations were inspired by Yuhannah Mirza Ben-David Dawud, a 19th century British collector of Persian manuscripts who obsessively cut up and reassembled manuscripts in his old age. Oicherman's installations used materials like discarded vinyl, wallpaper, and construction waste to reconstruct fragments of Dawud's life and collections. They included cutouts, maps, and a reconstruction of a medieval Turkish tent to suggest Dawud's travels and the fragments of memory he left behind.

1. Katya Oicherman
Renderings of Writings (2004)
Descriptions of Wanderings (2005)

2. Part I: Rendering of writings by Yuhannah Mirza Ben-David Dawud, researcher and poet,
illuminated by the divine light of passion of comprehension through preparation of
black and golden signs of the concealed wisdom of ancient manuscripts,
impenetrable for those uninitiated into the art of memory and interpretation;
who died in London’s borough of Highgate in 1969, of illness and old age
and also unable to part from his collection of last year newspapers,
which served him as bed linen and blanket,
which he has accumulated during his travels to the East, when he still was a young man,
but became such a miser and niggard that no one wanted to talk to him,
and he was only able to talk about his weary books
and he died alone. ∗
My work is founded in the story of Yuhanna Dawud, a British (of Jewish-Persian origins) collector of
Islamic art. Beginning as a passionate researcher of Persian manuscripts, he ended up obsessively
cutting and reassembling the original books. He died in London in 1969, in the age of 85. By that time
he was very ill, lived alone in an indigent apartment. One room for himself, three others for his
collection and archive. He did not part from even one item to improve his conditions.
What was he thinking of, looking at, sensing? I do not know. Neither can I read the inscriptions on
the dispelled fragments of the manuscripts, as I do not know the language. I can reconstruct his tale
using the details which his archive supplies: the cracking walls of the untidy room, the mouldy bread on
the chair, the golden medallions on the pages, the curly black letters, the shiny sharp blade.
In my collages, discarded vinyl flooring serves as a ground; its tactility reminds of earth and of skin.
Mounted on it there are cut-outs of my earlier work; photographs - from the archive of Dawud and my
own; pieces of materials I have collected for their textures; fragments I have painted over with gold and
colours. The accidental and the intentional, texture and image coexist on their surface.
Dispersed fragments unified by the passionate destructive gesture that created them; inscriptions and
details, often impenetrable and coded, but always eloquent, persuasive and contained in their materiality.
As a scintillating reminiscence which brings up to the surface one brightest detail, but no context which
allows to assign it a meaning. As an accidental pile of turbid recollections, unspeakable, but sensible,
entangled in the weary net of the consciousness.
The abstract notion “text” acquires flesh and is redistributed physically by Dawud. Reality is
transformed from its physical state into fleshless image, code, text in the memory. An authoritative hand
rewrites the text of the real and, in case the recalling person has a propensity to paper scribbling, applies
this text on paper, which in its turn is ready for cutting, in order, again, to be transformed into
recollection, code, text.
Materials:
Discarded vinyl, roof felt, asphalt, wallpaper, flooring rubber underlay, other construction refuse,
glass patina of 13th century crusader's vessels, textile, metal thread, felt, gold leaf, black and white
photo-copies, C prints, ink, acrylic, plastic, polystyrene, hardboard, steel, pins.
Sizes: wall C – 3.75 x 2.4 m, wall B – 2.8 x 2.4 m, floor collage A – approx. 3 x 3.5m, spikes –
1.6-1.8 m.

Final project for MA course in Goldsmiths College, London, 2004

3. C B
A
Rendering of Writings, general view of the installation↑
Floor collage↓

4. Rendering of Writings, floor collage, details

5. Rendering of Writings, floor collage – spikes, details

6. Rendering of Writings, wall C – mixed media on C-print, discarded hardboard, pins, dimensions
variable

8. Part II: The descriptions of peregrinations and scatterings of Yuhannah Mirza Ben-David
Dawud – researcher and poet illuminated by the divine light of passion
of comprehension through preparation of black and golden signs
of the concealed wisdom of ancient manuscripts,
impenetrable for those uninitiated into the art of memory and interpretation;
his journeys to the East in the search of the mystical tent,
a wandering tabernacle
which was said to contain the incredible cotton sheets
marked by the imprints of the prophetic sweating body and the sublime saliva;
which he found and returned to London
where in 1969 he drew this map on the backside of a souvenir picture and
where soon after, the rapture of his awakening brought death upon him.
Yuhannah Mirza Ben-David Dawud (1885-1969) was an Iranian born British collector and
researcher of Persian manuscripts. During the later years of his life he obsessively cut and
reassembled them. For more than two years my work is informed by the activities and the life story
of this person. “Part II: Descriptions of Wanderings” is a continuation of “Part I: Rendering of
Writings”, an installation in Goldsmiths College, London in 2004.
The drawing on the map – stains and suffusions of dirt, grease, spilled liquids – the traces of human
corporeal existence, the map of a lived life. Walls, floors, roofs and on them - layers of wallpaper,
carpets, vinyl, curtains, bedspreads, upholstery, roof felt – the shrouds of the house, which is the
exterior inclusive body of the tenant, even though the tenants are changing, moving in and out (this
state is of a special interest for me, as I am familiar with the long-lasting reality of a rented
accommodation). The concealed, un-noticeable, intimate trace, the imprint left by the tenant on the
house and by the house on the tenant. This imprint appears on the surface of the house – the second
skin. Surface is understood here in a wide sense as a space of intimate contact, not necessarily of a
pleasant nature.
Tent – an image which simultaneously introduces the fragility, frailness and temporality of a
dwelling place, a home, and its imperishable idea. A wandering tabernacle. Its soft walls, a worn net
of the consciousness in which pieces, shreds of recollections are entangled.
Tent is a permanently temporal dwelling. I would like to refer in my tent, in its form and
construction, to the medieval Turkish military tents – constructions where the soft textile replaces
stone. The Turkish tent in itself suggests another, mobile way of living, in which what is rendered
habitable is not a concrete fixed spot of space (a house), but a whole portion of geographical plane,
surface, which demands a map for its designation and navigation of the peregrination of a mobile
home. The hi/story of this wandering is told by the remnants of the mobile dwelling place, the
debris left behind. Subtle decorative medallions appear as traces of mould, black curly letters as
grain of decaying asphalt, colourful illustrations as assembly of worn shreds of floor vinyl, royal
golden seals as stains of spilled tea.
The collection of debris of construction in itself can appear as a sort of portrait, a testimony,
collective sediment of memory of the local people. The action of re-assembling becomes narration
and interpretation of this memory.
The installation was constructed in South Square Centre, Bradford, in 2005

9. Descriptions of Wanderings, Tent ↑
Approximately 5 x 4 x 4 m
Discarded upholsteries and isolation
materials, roof felt, manipulated
textiles, C prints, beads, gold leaf,
strings, ropes, nails.
The tent is installed employing the
inner architectural structure of the
space – massive wooden beams
Tent, details
←↓

10. Descriptions of Wanderings, Cut-out: close up and general view
15 x 11 x 2 cm
Black and white photocopies, pins

11. Descriptions of Wanderings, Map ↑ Details↓
Installation; approximately 2.5 x 2.8 x 0.5 m.
Discarded wallpaper and vinyl, roof felt, decayed hardboard, discarded upholstery and carpet,
other construction refuse, discarded wire, wool, parts of found toy railway, 13th century patina
from crusaders' vessels, C prints, black and white photocopies, ink, acrylic, gold leaf, polystyrene,
pins.