"The World as a Migrant Microdot" : Thresholds between Word and Image in David Medalla’s Work

Beginning in 1960, Philippine-born artist David Medalla made many places around
the world his temporary home. Moving between London and Paris in particular to
renew his short-term visas, he transformed his condition as a migrant into a
generative force within his media-crossing practice. This lecture focuses on that
transformation as it materialized in Medalla’s word-image experiments. Through
readings of textual, sculptural, and participatory works, it argues that his use of words
and images—always on the threshold of becoming one another—produces a
correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm. As the Earth itself is
understood to be in a state of migration, orbiting the sun, human migration appears
not as a state of exception but as a smaller-scale manifestation of planetary mobility.

Anne-Grit Becker earned her Ph.D. in art history from Freie Universität Berlin with
support from the Gerda Henkel Foundation. She has lectured at the Berlin University
of the Arts, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and the University of Graz. She is
currently a Research Associate at the University of Siegen. Her research examines
artists’ writings since the 1960s as a cross-media, cross-cultural expansion of
aesthetic production, with attention to experiences of migration, diaspora, and exile.
Her work has appeared in Archives of American Art Journal, Art in Translation, and
Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. Her essay “Letters of Transition” was
shortlisted for the 2026 Max Nänny Prize; her article “Corresponding Propositions” is
forthcoming in FKW: Zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und Visuelle Kultur.

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