Using a cabinet of curiosity format, I am playing with ideas about objects as historical evidence, and invite the viewer to think critically about them. Fossils serve as a record of geological time, in which humans are a mere blip, while reliquaries encapsulate myths that go back less than a couple of millennia. The origin of relics are often dubious, and their provenance hard to track. In fact, a reliquary is venerated for what it is thought to contain, and its real value lies in the story that surrounds the object and who has beheld it in the past. Similarly, fossils hold our fascination by telling us about the history of life before humans. Studied extensively, they are put into context using the scientific method, but in holding a fossil, one is physically connected to a prehistoric time.
Email the Artist: zofielang@gmail.com