Sophia

The project distills the etymological terrain of philo-sophia from the perspective of its (missing) namesake, Sophia, the Greek personification of wisdom. Specifically, what has philosophy done with its professed love of the woman steeped in wisdom? Where has she gone in the plane of abstract ideas that shape existence? Philosophia has run askew, scattering her somewhere in the past.

Sophia’s ensuing existential crisis provokes not erasure but its opposite—a textual takeover of a seminal work of Existentialist philosophy. The wisdom work of this emergent voice rewrites existential lines of logic through the lost text of her body, compounding the need for collective interrogation of our political conscience. Ultimately, Sophia summons from the confines of history to remain a timely beacon of dissent.

With the exception of its typographic cover design, this recreation is an exact rendering of the 1951 first edition printing of Existentialism and Human Emotions. The ‘holes’ created via laser-cut of the letters SOPHIA are significant to the integrity of the manuscript and final book form as an actualization of Sophia’s whereabouts. Bursts of kaleidoscopic color visible through the holes/letters are an attempt to signify the vibrancy of what has been lost. The corresponding white booklet contains her scattered remnants, trapped as they are in time.

The book was awarded Brown’s Weston Prize for best graduate work in addition to the Frances Mason Harris Prize for best manuscript of poetry or prose fiction written by a woman.