From the textual to the textural: Towards a multimodal understanding of the semiosis of collaborative printmaking

Prints have long been associated with language and communication, yet the subtle processes of production that scaffold their graphic traces often remain a mystery, unseen and entangled with the transitory and social stages of their making. This article follows the collective and multimodal semiosis of a printmaking workshop during a residency with Barbadian artist Annalee Davis, and the co-development of a print edition titled An Impossible Map . This residency was in partnership with the National Trust for Scotland’s project Facing our Past and Dundee Contemporary Arts Print Studio. Analysis focuses on the significance of texture and touch and the journey towards Davis’s selection of an inkless process resulting in a ‘blind emboss’, offering insights into the critical potential of print to evoke what Davis called the ‘inadequacies of the archive’ regarding historic forced banishments of indentured labourers from Scotland to the Caribbean to support the prosperity of the sugar trade.