James Drake: Tongue-Cut Sparrows

Tongue-Cut Sparrows presents a body of work inspired by the artist’s ongoing interest in the social dynamics of borderlands, offering a meditation on love, loss, and a desperate need to communicate. 

James Drake’s multi-disciplinary art practice centers around the human condition and systems of language to investigate temporal-spatial relations and the cyclical nature of history. During his time living in El Paso, Texas, issues related to the USA/Mexico border became a focal point in his work and the broader universal context he explores. 

The project began in the mid-’90s when Drake observed women standing on a sidewalk outside the El Paso County Jail using a system of sign language to communicate with incarcerated family members and loved ones. Fascinated by this inventive form of gestural communication, Drake became curious if the women could integrate quotes from literature and poetry into their sign language. They agreed to let Drake record their visits on video and worked with him in selecting texts to sign from the writings of Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, Chicano-Apache American poet Jimmy Santiago Baca, Cormac McCarthy, as well as William Blake, William Shakespeare, and Dante Alighieri. The series evolved into a multi-channel video work and spans decades of poems, photographs, printmaking and large-scale charcoal drawings.

Works from the Tongue-Cut Sparrows series have been shown internationally in major institutions, including the Blanton Museum of Art, Buffalo AKG Art Museum (formerly the Albright-Knox Art Gallery), Denver Art Museum, High Museum of Art, SITE Santa Fe, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.