mirages

the series of sculpture titled “mirage” were inspired by walter benjamin’s grave stone at portbou, spain. the site seems fraught with unkowns, particularly as the grave stone does not mark the site of the body nor the site of the death. questions about benjamin’s true grave are full of questions, with many believing that his body was buried in s common grave along with many others. while none of this information came out of my research of benjamin’s archives, i did spend a lot of time reading michael taussig’s book “walter benjamin’s grave”, which did fuel some of the ideas for these works. the idea of using mirrors to replicate and shape-change the existing objects, i also, of course, wanted the reflections (in many cases of the term) to both extend and cut-short, the objects and their views – where the does the body end, where does the life end, etc. and obviously, the use of materials mainly connected to fixing broken parts of a body was not simply a formal decision.