Borrowing
Cultures develop through acts of integration. They thrive by borrowing from one another. Both the borrowed objects and the societies involved are altered in that transaction. Museum collections are a register of those transactions, while also exerting unacknowledged power over how we perceive the conflicting philosophical, religious, and political cosmologies embedded in the objects they gather...
Borrowing
Cultures develop through acts of integration. They thrive by borrowing from one another. Both the borrowed objects and the societies involved are altered in that transaction. Museum collections are a register of those transactions, while also exerting unacknowledged power over how we perceive the conflicting philosophical, religious, and political cosmologies embedded in the objects they gather. My project comments on museum collections to get at a larger issue, which is the mutability of all objects and meanings. The collected objects in museums are only one small piece of evidence.
To design my installation I’ve taken objects from different societies with fundamentally different assumptions about what it means to be human and put them in dialogue with one another. I suggest identities radically different from what they appear to be while on display in the collections, but those new identities are themselves unstable. Following their metamorphoses is essential to the humor in my piece and part of its content, a reminder that the whole project is about unstable meanings. And, at a cosmological level, it’s a nod to the fact that everything we know, including ourselves, is constituted by the same cosmic dust that originated at the singular moment that our universe formed, in a continual state of dissolution and reconstitution ever since. At least, that’s the story that makes sense to me.
Incantation Bowl Painted clay Parthian Period (248 BC-AD 226) KM 33756
Inscription of a Young Boy Marble, pigment Roman period (late 2nd-early 3rd century AD) KM 1039
Bird-faced Figure Clay Aegean Middle Bronze Age (1900-1625 BC) KM 94586
Apulian Volute Krater Clay, red figure Ca. 340 BC KM 1982.2.1
Statue of Goddess Aphrodite Bronze Roman Period (1st-4th century AD) KM 10728
Amphora Clay Boeotian Geometric (ca. 1000-700 BC) KM 2570
Fish Plate Clay, red figure ware South Italian Greek (late 4th century BC) KM 1084
Wine Jug (Oinochoe) Clay, red figure ware Faliscan (4th century BC) KM 2609
Broom Palm fiber Roman period (1st-4th century AD) KM 10851
Flask Glass Roman period (1st-2nd century AD) KM 5944
Conical Glass Lamp Glass Roman Period (1st-4th century AD) KM 5929
Lamp Stand Wood Roman Period (1st-4th century AD) KM 3633
Broad Collar Necklace Faience, gold; reconstructed from ancient beads Later Period-Ptolemaic (650-30 BC) KM 2001.1.2
Shouldered Lekythos with Herakles Battling Cretan Bull Clay, Attic black figure 6th century BC KM 29170
Oil Bottle (Lekythos) with Athena Clay, Attic red figure Ca. 480-460 BC KM 1990.1.1
Shouldered Lekythos with Departure Scene Clay, Attic black figure 6th century BC KM 29221
Basket Reed Roman period (1st-4th century AD) KM 3442
Stemmed Drinking Cup (Kylix), exterior Clay, Attic red figure 430 BC KM 2601
Head of Silenus or an Old Satyr Marble Roman Period (1st of 2nd century AD) KM 1984.5.1
Horizontal Frieze Panel Stucco Parthian period (248 BC-AD 226) KM 16616
Personification of the Nile (Nilus) Travertine Roman Period (late 2nd century AD) KM 25747, KM 25869
Stemmed Drinking Cup (Kylix), interior Clay, Attic red figure 430 BC KM 2601
Horizontal Frieze Panel Stucco Parthian Period (248 BC-AD 226) KM 16615a
Oinochoe with Handle Clay, white painted ware Cypro-Archaic I or II (ca. 750-500 BC) KM 26776
Male Head with Egyptian Hairstyle Limestone Mid-6th century BC KM 29108
Siren Capital from a Miniature Column Limestone Roman Period (2nd century BC or later) KM 1969.6.1
Pilaster Capital with Turtle and Salamander Marble Roman Period (1st century AD) KM 3011, KM 3032
Relief Fragment of Addorsed Horses' Heads Marble Roman Period (late 2nd-early 3rd century AD) KM 2024
Kylix with Palmette Design Clay, Attic black figure 625-600 BC KM 1083