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Federica Schiavo Gallery
Ishmael Randall Weeks
Excavation Annotation
2017
acrylic gel transfers, mineral, copper, silver, elecroplated copper, wood
265 × 165 × 64 cm
Short Description

The relationship between architecture and its social context is at the heart of the work of Ishmael Randall Weeks (Cusco, Peru, 1976). He uses architecture as a metaphor to reflect on man's impact on the landscape. Juxtaposing references to Modernism with the informality of indigenous architecture in Latin America, his work is a critique of the abuses of power and vested interests of the political establishment, and highlights the alternative forms of community life, education and knowledge that exist in parallel. The relationship between landscape/context and memory represents a further theme of investigation: the connections between land and identity and the continuous struggle between the search for mobility, a forced de-territorialisation, on the one hand, and the desire for rootedness on the other.

 

The installation Excavation Annotations is a composition based on photographic transfers of ancient textiles belonging to the Nazca culture onto strips of acrylic gel. These prints, hung on steel bars, are delicately draped together with copper and silver plates, minerals and other objects referring to different eras, in an organised but not museological arrangement. In comparing the photographic reproduction of textiles with the lustre of copper, silver or a mineral, the work insists on the conviction that our interpretations of the past are often overshadowed by the quality of the reproductions of media and ancient objects to which we are exposed.