About, for, and to #1

Annika Finne, Emily Frank and Gala Porras-Kim

December 7, 2021, 7pm
932 Grand

This public program invites experts from various disciplines into Gala Porras-Kim’s exhibition, Precipitation for an Arid Landscape, to describe, interpret, and question how objects are used to narrate divergent points of view on complex situations in which partial information and a desire for closure converge. By layering insights from multiple frames of reference and knowledge production, including conservation, music, ecology, poetry, law and anthropology, the program seeks to ask: how do we—and how could we—speak about, for, and to objects, and for what or whose benefit do we speak?

The exhibition walkthrough with the artist Gala Porras-Kim and conservators Annika Finne and Emily Frank focuses on the notion of instability. Looking at the ancient objects brought forth by Porras-Kim’s works, the conversation explores the cultural narratives these objects represent and help construct, which are neither uniform nor static. The conservators reflect on the various ways in which these artifacts might have been manipulated and conserved during their lifespans. Through a speculative exercise, the artist and conservators ask: How can instability be cultivated and cared for? How might the unstable material nature of archaeological artifacts entwine with an unstable conceptual understanding of them?

This is an in-person event. Free and open to the public.

Image: Gala Porras-Kim. One Bag of Miscellaneous Spearheads and Sticks, 2009

About the speakers
Annika Finne and Emily Frank are practicing conservators and doctoral students at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. They have worked with ancient and modern works of art in various international sites, including the Sardis Expedition and the Kınık Höyük Archaeological Project in Turkey; the Excavation in the Sanctuary of the Great Gods in Samothrace, Greece; the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid; and the Yale University Art Gallery.