Substrate Reader is a series of works on glass, where layered images of organic processes—fungal growths, cellular patterns, stones, and swamp—are marked by hand engravings. Gestures that resemble writing, but resist legibility. By abstracting and engraving strokes and symbols from my mother tongue, I construct new poetics of linguistic belonging—mapping out a space where borders between recognized languages become porous, and translation becomes speculative.

Earlier forms of language were often embedded in the natural world, carved into stone or drawn from natural forms, closer to gesture than grammar. These works are informed by this history and the concept of the bio-asemic—an approach to language that opens up what reading and writing can be. Whereas asemic writing refers to marks without specific semantic content, bio-asemic writing applies the same principles to organic forms and processes. By layering bio-asemic prints with hand engravings, Substrate Reader is an invitation to search for language in places we are not taught to find it.