Chapter Gallery

It’s your last chance to see Nina Thomas’ work in our café bar.

In The Broken Speaker, Nina works with captioning and silent film as her medium to explore speech, voice and silence, situating these within Deaf and disabled historical contexts.

Throughout the work, she expands captioning both within and beyond the frame; you will see the captions move onto the café bar walls here at Chapter. She’s deliberately chosen to caption breath and hesitation – elements often omitted in traditional captioning – rather than treated as a failure of communication, here they become meaningful in their own right. Breath occupies the space between us. Nina turns toward instances of uncertainty and interdependence in her work, and searches for moments of shared understanding.

About the artist

Nina Thomas is an artist; her work often explores captioning as a creative medium. Nina is profoundly deaf and has worked for many years to advocate for change in the cultural sector, working with cultural venues to improve accessibility. She was a trustee of the charity Stagetext, a founding member of The Film Bunch (a deaf and hard-of-hearing film organisation). As an artist, Nina has exhibited at venues such as LUX, British Ceramics Biennial, The Crypt Gallery (NW1), Liberty Festival 2022, Tate Exchange (Tate Modern, London) and OVADA (Oxford).

**

Dyma’ch cyfle olaf i weld gwaith Nina Thomas yn ein caffi bar.

Yn The Broken Speaker, mae Nina’n gweithio gyda chapsiynau a ffilmiau mud fel ei chyfrwng i archwilio lleferydd, llais a thawelwch, gan osod y rhain mewn cyd-destunau hanesyddol Byddar ac anabl.

Drwy ei gwaith, mae’n ehangu capsiynau yn y ffrâm a’r tu hwnt iddi; byddwch yn gweld y capsiynau’n symud i waliau’r caffi bar yma yn Chapter. Mae hi wedi dewis capsiynu anadlu ac oedi yn bwrpasol – elfennau sy’n aml yn cael eu gadael o gapsiynau traddodiadol – yn hytrach na’u trin fel methiant cyfathrebu, yma maen nhw’n dod yn ystyrlon yn eu rhinwedd eu hunain. Anadl yn llenwi’r gofod rhyngon ni. Mae Nina yn rhoi sylw i ansicrwydd a rhyngddibyniaeth yn ei gwaith, ac yn chwilio am eiliadau o gyd-ddealltwriaeth.