Road signs are a form of communication prescribing a particular system of interaction that people should observe on the roads. This kind of communication has something in common with visual art, which conveys messages through visual images. However, art is ambivalent and complex to interpret. Road signs by definition lack the ambiguous multi-dimensionality of interpretations. They just forbid, allow and dictate: one’s physical safety depends on the clarity of their messages.

 

Through a minimal gesture (in relation to the surface of the actual road sign) of making a small incision – essentially adding nothing, only taking away – Kadyrova fundamentally changes the sign’s message, thus transforming the semiotics of road signs into the semiotics of art. Thus, a person seemingly hit by a car unexpectedly receives an escape hatch, offering the potential opportunity to get out of the dangerous situation. Pedestrians and bicyclists acquire new lanes and an exit from the claustrophobic space of the closed sign field; and a worker digging a hole finds an additional place for piling