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"kaph"
- Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston
December 13 ,1997 - February 1, 1998 |
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“kaph”
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What one first finds upon
visiting Ann Hamilton’s installation "kaph" is a
curving wall 108 feet long and 16 feet high. Mysterious for the
way in which it makes the gallery seem otherwise empty, this wall
is painted a cool, glossy white. The tenuous sound of a swinging
metal trapeze draws one around the corner where one discovers that
there is not one wall but two, the combination of which forms a
curving, glistening canyon. Examining the walls closely, small drops
of a musty smelling liquid come into view. The walls, pregnant with
3,000
pores leaking bourbon mixed with distilled water, are literally
sweating or weeping. As one’s eyes adjust to the dim light,
stains from weeks of dripping liquid become visible, soiling the
icy walls. At the end of the canyon a lone figure sits upright in
a chair, concentrated on a single
task. Oblivious to viewers, he or she delicately unravels blue
numbers
stitched into a silk organza glove, dropping the now inarticulate
threads onto the floor. Walking behind the second canyon wall, four
work tables come into view. Upon each table is a mountainous form
wrapped in white sheets, concealing the material beneath. The material
turns out to be de-scented earth and occasionally the packed dirt
shifts beneath the sheets, adding an unsettling twist to the already
tense atmosphere. In a work which is as haunting as it is perplexing,
Hamilton presents a situation rich with meaning. The metal trapeze
- just out of reach - swings rhythmically, at times coinciding with
the pace of the viewer’s walking and breathing. The mounds
of wrapped dirt are at once cadavers, the dirt from graves, artifacts
from a dig, and specimens put on display. The curving white walls
recall an icon of human suffering and remembrance, namely the Wailing
Wall in Jerusalem, where for centuries visitors have gone to pray,
leave messages, or simply touch a piece of the past. A confluence
of the metered aspects of daily life – walking, breathing,
working – and images which suggest silence, mourning and mortality
– the wet walls, the wrapped tables – Hamilton’s
kaph is a rich work which requires that visitors slow down, meander,
and ponder the archetypal imagery present.
While Hamilton is perhaps best known for her installations heavy
with material - whether an expansive sea of horse hair, 14,000 pounds
of blue workclothes, or a carpet of 750,000 pennies – her installations
of recent years have become subtler in their relationship to the
surrounding architecture and to the way in which they often conceal
the heavy labor that went into their production. While many workers
were necessary to bring about "indigo blue," an installation
comprising a towering hill of folded shirts and pants, a comparable
amount of work went into producing the concealed mechanics for "myein"
at the 1999 Venice Biennale. In this work the artist devised walls
which sifted red pigment down their sides and onto the floor. The
walls of this otherwise classically Jeffersonian building - a style
of architecture intimately tied to a history of America, democracy,
and slavery – were enhanced with oversized Braille dots which
picked up the pigment that sifted down, staining the walls with
a red-blood powder. In "ghost: a border act," featured
in the Art:21 series, two silk organza rooms are suspended from
the ceiling of a recently closed textile factory. These floating
rooms become screens upon which a spinning image of a pencil making
and unmaking a continuous line are projected. In this work, as in
"myein", the person or attendant performing a ritualized
task – for many years a staple of Hamilton’s tableaus
- is absent; present, but toned down, is the imprint of the many
hands it took to bring about the works themselves. As in "kaph,"
where the nearly two miles of intravenous tubing necessary to make
the walls weep is concealed within two curving walls, Hamilton has
become interested in concealing her hand as an artist. Kaph, which
is the Sanskrit word for the palm of one’s hand, becomes the
subject of the work as much as it becomes a working image –
the attendant dutifully unraveling numbers from her glove, destroying
and creating in a single gesture. |
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