Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Within the narrative of Sahej Rahal’s The rocks we will find, beings perform absurd acts in derelict corners of the city, emerging into the everyday as if from the cracks of our civilization, transforming them into liminal sites of ritual, and challenging ways in which we experience time and space. The temporal acts and their residue become primary motifs in his practice. The characters that inhabit these performances bare indices to different cultures, mythologies and pop culture.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

As a discipline born at the same time as colonialism, archeology is struggling to rid itself of this sad context. It is simultaneously the science of the creation and the restoration of ruins. Ali Cherri is interested in auctions of archaeological objects and the desire they inspire in this context.

Photography (Photography)

For the works KAKERA, Bullet Train and KAKERA, Loving God Tatsuki Masaru traveled throughout Japan to visit museums holding kakera (which translates to “fragments”) of Jomon Period potteries –Japan’s pre-history 2,300-15,000 years ago. Small and fragile, the kakera were donated by farmers who had found them in their fields, or by archeologists, and then wrapped in newspapers and stored away. Today they sit quietly on the shelves of museums, unknown to people.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

In Greek mythology, Arachne was a talented mortal weaver who challenged Athena, goddess of wisdom and crafts, to a weaving contest; this hubris resulted in her being transformed into a spider. EE-0 is the first episode of the Europa Enterprise project which looks into new, feminist readings of established Eurocentric myths and reconsiders the meaning of cultural heritage and the production of artifacts for the future. In EE-0 , the Greek myth of Arachne is re-contextualized through a poetic script, taking an imaginative leap from antiquity into science fiction.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The Sculpture by Musquiqui Chihying comprises a two-channel lecture performance and a photograph. The video begins with 2017 footage of French president Emmanuel Macron announcing his commitment to the restitution of French-held African objects looted during the colonial era. Moving through the video, the artist’s voice narrates over archival images and videos, explaining how so many African artifacts came into the possession of European museums.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

After two years of research in close conversation with anthropologists and archaeologists, Linares eventually enrolled in classes to study archeology—specifically the history of material artifacts. He became obsessed with the origin of metaphor, and the stick as the Ur (earliest) object used by humans that led to the formation of meaning itself. This video, which accompanies the “Museum of the Stick,” is part of major work surveying material culture collected and presented by the artist through a complex narrative of associations and anthropological research.

Installation (Installation)

Mariana Castillo Deball’s set of kill hole plates are part of a larger body of work problematizing archeological narratives, and drawing attention to the conservation process and its role in recreating an imagined object. They are playful and exaggerated representations of “kill hole pottery” — ceramic dishes in the Mimbres tradition with distinct circular holes located in the center of the pots. Although very little is known about the Mimbres culture’s specific beliefs, they are loosely understood to have terminated the object symbolically in preparation for funerary use.