At the center of the work are two stainless steel carts and two marble slabs. On each slab is an engraving of a distorted word, each created by merging two different words. One slab combines Yitgadal (“may His name be exalted”) + Nitradal, and the other Veyitkadash (“may He be sanctified”) + Dridenaba. The words Yitgadal and Veyitkadash open the Jewish Kaddish prayer for the dead. For hundreds of years, this prayer has been recited by mourners, most of whom do not know the meaning of much of the text, as it is written in Aramaic.

The words Nitradal and Dridenaba open Danino’s poem Kaddish-Orphan-Language, which, based on the original Kaddish, describes the evolution of language in four stages following a traumatic event. The slabs confront the viewer with unreadable language, transforming words into images.

The work presents the moment of rupture and fracture in language caused by both personal and ongoing collective trauma. The engraving of these unreadable words into marble acts as a monument to language itself, an attempt to memorialize its brokenness. At the same time, the work explores the boundaries and limitations of language, exploring how broken language becomes image.