The work of Pro Helvetia and Blank projects residency artist, Irène Hug, is concerned with systems of representation in which she mainly uses the visual presence of text: their linguistic content, their message and form in their aesthetic diversity. These can have different representational codes. The urban space is the place where all sorts of written and iconographic information intensifies, for this reason it is her preferred 'playground'.

For her exhibition at blank projects, she developed photographic works based on Cape Town and Johannesburg locales which she visited: streets and traffic junctions that are highly concentrated with communication, made of various layers of different kinds of information and visual attractions. These images she then re-composed by juxtaposing the features of inscription, architecture and their respective codes.  The languages of inscription are multifaceted like the people passing by. The sites are not recognizable; they are somewhere/anywhere, similar to other global urban street-views.

The exhibition also showcases some sculptural forms created out of found material which are a continuation of the basic principles of the photographic work. The sculpural works relate to the 'packaging' and the content of writing, highlighted by the use of found cardboard packaging in which the created letter-forms are supplemented by the original printed product-signage. The original packaging, which states the place of origin of the products become the form for the abstracted letter sign.