“Mightier Than,” typewriters turned into weapons, a series by Ravi Zupa
“The pen is mightier than the sword,” wrote Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839 when advocating for an independent press. Word can travel a long way especially in today’s age of technology, we see time and time again how easy it is to spread a false story through social media. The words we write and sometimes do more good, even sometimes more harm than sword or guns ever could. One artist takes this idea and flips it for the 20th century. In a series of sculptures titled “Mightier Than” artist Ravi Zupa deconstructs antique typewriter and using their parts turns them into replicas guns.
Zupa is an artist who likes to create with his own two hands and when making these works that’s exactly what he did. He began by disassembling the typewriters and used their various parts in many different ways when constructing each sculpture. He then used components from staplers along with scrap metal to finish off the pieces. All parts of the sculpture are then either helped together by bolts/rivets or welded together. These works may not shoot but the look of them is close enough to the real thing to make you anxious. It’s a beautifully poetic statement to turn something used to write into something that appears so deadly. It shows us that we should be just as careful with how we use our words as we can change someones like with just one sentence as can a gun with just one bullet.
Source: The artist website.
Follow Zupa on Instagram here.
Click here to read more sculpture articles.