2010

Commissioned by Queens Museum, New York. Curated by Hitomi Iwasaki.

Glass bricks, books, and antiquated office furniture make up Republik of Perpetual Reconstitution and Rebuild, in which visitors walk through a dystopian labyrinth of metal lockers, and piles of Moby Dick coloring books, to arrive at a cast of Michelangelo’s La Pieta in a glass enclosure. A sign encourages them to reach through a hole in the enclosure and touch the life-size sculpture.

I found inspiration for this piece in the history of the Queens Museum and its physical site. The New York City building was originally constructed for the 1939 World’s Fair. Decades later the city hosted the 1964 World’s Fair at the same location. The organizers pulled off an ambitious plan in the Sixties when they managed to persuade The Vatican to allow the original La Pieta to leave St Peter’s and make the trip across the Atlantic for the first time ever. A plaster cast of La Pieta was shipped across the ocean in advance of the original in order to troubleshoot any problems along the way. The trip went smoothly and the plaster cast has been at the Queens Museum ever since.

I worked with participants in the museum’s program called ‘New New Yorkers’ - the museum’s educational outreach initiative for recent immigrants to Queens. Participants made individual installations inside the lockers. The project evolved over the time of the exhibition and became a hub for unlikely encounters between visitors and participants; encounters between different histories, cultures, memories, and futures.

Recomposing Pieta: A Composition for Viola, House Painters, and Well-Tempered Juke Box was performed during the exhibition. Georgia Sagri and I switched roles to reenact the positions of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ in La Pieta. Sam Quintal played Cello Suite #6 in D by Johann Sebastian Bach on the viola. Richard Simmons and Emil Bakalli painted the walls of the gallery surrounding the sculpture.

Viewers at the performance were invited to fill in the pages of the Moby Dick coloring books.

Materials & Actions: Plaster cast of Michelangelo’s La Pieta, semitransparent glass brick enclosure, 10,000 Moby Dick coloring books, metal lockers, obsolete museum furniture. Performance with Georgia Sagri, Richard Simmons, Emil Bakalli, and Sam Quintal.