Book of Sand
Installation, Sand and resin with video projection. 40x30x5 cm
I once heard a story of a fighter pilot on a training mission above the Empty Quarter who spotted a structure emerging from the sand below. When the pilot returned the next day the structure was gone, lost beneath the sand that folded over it like pages of a book reclaiming what once was.
The sand thus chooses what truths to tell and what secrets will remain myth. A cycle of revelation then loss as the present sweeps over the past in an attempt to give shape to the future.
Discoveries in archaeology — from tool to statue, temple to dwelling — go beyond the study of mere objects and spaces. They are attempted readings of the volumes of sand swept away in the process of unearthing the object from its contextual home, resulting in missing pages across a looted cultural landscape — rendering the historical narrative illegible — as the sand that once cradled those narratives is prematurely and artificially eroded.
Displaced, the sand travels towards our urban spaces, cities that have equally lost touch with their purpose and contextual setting. The sand finds itself trapped within a rigid urban language, If ignored these lost visitors will overwhelm and sweep over the dwellings we call home. Leaving us as structures that may one day be temporarily seen from above.
My intention is to reconstitute that which is now lost, a dutiful rereading that gives shelter to the narratives that once lived amongst the grains of sand.
Commissioned by MISK 2020