ONE SHAPE OF THE LANGUAGE: CYRILLIC ARCHIVES by Inna Kochkina

‘One Shape of the Language: Cyrillic Archives’ is an artist’s book documenting Inna Kochkina’s research into the history, style, and politics of traditional Cyrillic.

This research was born from a self-reflective curiosity about the relationship between cultural heritage and typography and evolved to become an examination of the socio-political role of typographic style. Cyrillic is an ancient script that has been used to express various forms of cultural and territorial domination and has long been associated with Slavic nationalism, both in Russia and in the former territories of the USSR. 

This publication is the result of Inna Kochkina’s engagement with archives of typography and conversations with anti-colonial activists, artists, and historians who have interrogated traditional Cyrillic and its relationship to colonial power. 

Alongside conducting scholarly research, Inna Kochkina produced drawings and experimental photographic prints in response to low-quality typographic archives of traditional Cyrillic. Those prints are presented here in a roughly chronological order, poetically portraying Inna’s complex relationship with her native script. Variously precise, messy, and destructive, these works ultimately convey a series of “imaginary” shapes through which to reinterpret the traditional Cyrillic of the past and present.