Drawing unfamiliar words with artist Laura Khlystova.
Bouba/Kiki
- Date:
- 16 Feb 2025,
12:00–16:00
- Age restrictions
- 6+
Suitable for adults and children aged 6 and above. Children under 14 must be accompanied by an adult.
Each participant, including children, requires individual registration. Walk-ins are welcome, subject to availability.
The workshops will be held at 12:00–13:00, 13:00–14:00, 14:00–15:00, and 15:00–16:00.
English interpretation will be provided for the 13:00–14:00 session.
To register, please email international@ges-2.org with the number of tickets required, your child’s age, and how you heard about the event.
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What does a bouba look like? Or a kiki? This question has been asked in various countries, with consistently similar results: 95% of respondents imagined a bouba to be a rounded shape, and a kiki to be angular. What did you imagine it to be?
Illustration: Laura Khlystova
The connection between the sound of a word and its visual appearance is one manifestation of synaesthesia. For people with synaesthesia, signals from one sense organ trigger responses in another—for example, letters may have colours, or sounds may have smells. But even if you’re not a synesthete, you may find that various sounds and letter combinations can still give rise to unexpected associations.
Artist Laura Khlystova once came across a list of amusing and surprising names of plants she had never heard of and began imagining what they might look like. At her workshop, she invites participants to take this practice a step further and explore the world of unusual associations with unfamiliar concepts. We’ll take rare and interesting-sounding words at random from a rotating drum and imagine colours, shapes, and textures for them.
Instructor
Laura Khlystova — an illustrator and artist. A graduate of the Stroganov Moscow State Academy of Arts and Industry with a degree in Graphic Design, she has created illustrations for