This wearable sculpture starts from a found shoe polish tin. The object refers to maintenance, shine, repetition and control over the surface. It may come from a military context, but the core of the work is not the military narrative. The core lies in the action itself: polishing, rubbing, correcting, making a surface conform to a norm.
The dialogue with Tiona Nekkia McClodden emerges because in PURE GAZE she also works with leather, binding, pressure and Saphir shoe polish. In her work, shoe polish is no longer a functional material, but a carrier of touch, labour, tension and skin. This object carries a similar charge: it is a small utilitarian object, but it preserves traces of control, shine and repetition.
Within Post-Colonial Gold, the tin is not embellished, but repositioned. Gold brings the object into a new system of value and raises the question of why some materials are considered precious while others are seen as banal. The found object does not become a luxury object, but a carrier of meaning.
The object
The shoe polish tin is presented as a found object, with visible residue and traces of use. These traces are essential: they show that the object is not empty, but already carries a history of action and repetition.
By placing the tin on the body, it shifts from utilitarian object to sculptural figure. It no longer has to make another surface shine. It becomes the object through which the act of polishing, correcting and controlling becomes visible.
Material
The connection with McClodden lies in the material language: shoe polish, skin, surface, pressure and treatment. In PURE GAZE, she uses shoe polish on leather to make tension, shine and bodily labour tangible.
In this wearable sculpture, the tin itself becomes both material and archive. It carries the residue of the action it once enabled.
Gold does not stand for decoration here, but for revaluation. It brings an everyday object into relation with value, extraction, possession and history.
Core idea
The core of the work is the shift from use to tension.
A shoe polish tin is made to correct a surface: to remove dullness, produce shine and control traces. In this work, that very action is made visible. The tin no longer has to improve anything; it reveals the logic of polishing itself: control over the surface.
This is where it connects to McClodden. In PURE GAZE, she does not use shoe polish to neatly finish something, but to place material under pressure. Shine, in her work, is not beauty, but a trace of touch, labour and control.
This object does this on another scale. It begins with the instrument of that action: the tin. By being worn, it does not become an illustration of discipline, but a closed form in which use, pressure and value come together.
In dialogue — Tiona Nekkia McClodden
In PURE GAZE, McClodden speaks of a “profane hold”: a pressure that exceeds ordinary human interaction. Her works are not shown as bodies, but as abstract figures. They refer to the body without allowing themselves to be fully read.
This shoe polish tin does something comparable on the level of the object. It is recognisable, but not fully explainable. It refers to shine, labour and control, but it does not become a simple illustration of them. It remains closed, charged and partly elusive.
Resonance with the present
We live in a time in which visibility is often seen as freedom. McClodden shows that visibility can also become pressure: the pressure to show oneself, to explain oneself and to be available to the gaze of another.
This wearable sculpture brings that question back to an everyday object. The tin becomes visible, but not emptied out. It receives attention without losing its tension.
Within Post-Colonial Gold, this is a process of revaluation: value is not determined only by shine or possession, but also by use, residue, labour, skin and history.
Value
Elusiveness — dignity through elusiveness
In dialogue with Tiona Nekkia McClodden, this work makes visible that something can be seen without becoming fully available. The object shows traces of use, control and labour on the surface, but it resists being reduced to one clear meaning.
The value lies in retaining its own tension. The work may be looked at, worn and approached, but it does not have to be fully explained or consumed. This is the connection with McClodden: dignity emerges where visibility does not automatically become possession.