4 mourners on a mantel
2017 - Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)
108 x 184 x 6.35 cm.
Gala Porras-Kim
The graphite drawing 4 mourners on a mantel by Gala Porras-Kim is part of a larger installation and body of research, entitled An Index and Its Settings (Un Índice y Sus Entornos) , in which the artist reconsiders 235 ancient burial figures (from circa 200 BCE – 50 CE) from what is now Mexico’s Pacific coast that are part of the Proctor Stafford Collection held by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Eschewing their current musicological function, 4 mourners on a mantel presents photo-realistic depictions of said figures on top of a hypothetical collector’s fireplace. Herein, these funerary objects are displaced as curios which stare back at the viewer in signs of grief and confusion. Could they be lamenting their lost hosts, or are they upset about being dug up, bought and sold, and ultimately transformed from sacred objects into appropriated trinkets for domestic entraining? Whatever the case may be, Porras-Kim touches on the strange life of objects (and their authors) as their use and meaning is tempered not by their inherent form, but by ownership and various display apparati. Eschewing a pure materialist reading, An Index and Its Settings challenges how strict formalist interpretation of artworks can obfuscate the ethical and political means of exchange through which an object is handled. These works can likewise be viewed as ciphers in which mute objects are made to perform acts of ventriloquism to satisfy the desires of those who possess them.
Gala Porras-Kim’s work plays objects against their framing to consider how an artefact’s “message” is tempered by display, use, historic setting, and other modes of exchange. In particular, she often works with pre-Colombian objects, dead languages, and like archaeological fragments whose intention and original context have been obscured by time, or by inscription into another culture. In doing so, Porras-Kim presses the subjective nature of archaeology, as well as the general epistemology of all forms of historiographic science. If cultural history is a mode to consider where we come from, Porras-Kim’s work teases that these background narratives are not only incomplete but may be contaminated by contemporary assumptions, wants, and biases around material culture and its presentation.
Colors:
Related works sharing similar palette
© » KADIST
Matt Mullican
2018Mullican’s Stick Figure Drawings depict characters reduced to their most basic graphic representation...
© » KADIST
Arseny Zhilyaev
His large installation entitled The Museum of Proletarian Culture (2012) looked at the changes in artistic practice that have occurred in Russia throughout the last thirty years – from the amateur art of the late Soviet era to the commercialized post-Soviet cultural practices and the more recent self-expression via contemporary social networks...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Orang Phebien: Telling the story of the Baweanese | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Illustration: Hadi Osni August 5, 2020 Lesser known narratives involving migration in Singapore are in the spotlight with The Arts House’ latest edition of LumiNation ...
© » KADIST
Mary Reid Kelley
2015Kelley’s 2015 portrait of the poet Charles Baudelaire is one of a series of poets, rappers, and other thinkers who have influenced the artist’s ideas about beauty, creativity, and expression...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
ArtsEquator's Top 10 Picks at the Performing Arts Meeting 2019 | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles José Maceda, Cassettes 100, 1971, Photo by Nathaniel Gutierrez, Courtesy of UP Center for Ethnomusicology and Ringo Bunoan January 10, 2019 Established in 1995, the Tokyo Performing Arts Market (TPAM) was created to be a platform to network Japanese artists with producers and funders...
© » ARTS EQUATOR
Gloomy outlook for Vietnamese cinema, literature scene: workshop (via Tuoi Tre News) | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Photo: Tuoi Tre December 27, 2018 Attendees at a national workshop held in Hanoi on Wednesday to discuss the multitude of issues plaguing the Vietnamese film and literature industries were not shy about voicing disdain for the current state of literary and cinematic art in Vietnam...
© » BROOKLYN STREET ART
buZ Blurr, One Telling of the “Origin Story” at Straat Museum Amsterdam | Brooklyn Street Art BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY In the shifting culturescapes of urban contemporary art, STRAAT Museum’s latest exhibition, “Moniker: An Origin Story,” emerges as a poignant narrative that bridges the transient heritage of hobo monikers with the vibrant pulse of today’s street art scene...
© » KADIST
Uriel Orlow
2016The series The Memory of Trees is specifically about trees, and what trees have witnessed in South Africa: for example, trees that were used as locations for slave trading, or trees that was during the anti-Apartheid struggle as a kind of identifier for a safe house for activists who were fleeing from security forces...
© » KADIST
Ha Tae-Bum
2010Ha Tae-Bum’s “White” series, started in 2008, begins with photographic images from the mainstream media depicting sites of conflict or crisis...
© » THEARTNEWSPER
New filing in Frankenthaler Foundation lawsuit alleges 'pay-to-play' scheme Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Lawsuits news New filing in Frankenthaler Foundation lawsuit alleges 'pay-to-play' scheme Frankenthaler's nephew has accused the foundation, which terminated his board position last spring, of "extensive self-dealing" Torey Akers 2 February 2024 Share Helen Frankenthaler at work with an unidentified man in her studio in West Islip, New York, 1964 Science History Images / Alamy Stock Photo The nephew of the legendary Abstract Expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011), Frederick Iseman, has filed an amendment to his November 2023 lawsuit against the artist’s foundation and directors, including his own family members...
