TRUTH What Cannot Be Erased in dialoog met Kara Walker
TRUTH — What Cannot Be Erased
In dialogue with Kara Walker
A wearable sculpture containing a fragment of blue-and-white ceramic, set within an irregular gold structure. The fragment remains incomplete and unrestored.
Gold does not function as luxury, but as a frame that reveals what remains.
The ceramic refers to objects that circulated through early global trade routes, entangled with systems of power, extraction, and colonial history. Within the ring, the fragment exists simultaneously as object, artifact, and trace.
This work shifts the meaning of value: not the material itself, but what the object carries — history, memory, and human experience.
In dialogue with Kara Walker (Blog), the work exposes the tension between refinement and violence. What appears decorative is inseparable from structures of inequality.
Handmade, unique, and part of Post-Colonial Gold immerrsive expo
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THE OBJECT
This wearable sculpture incorporates a fragment of black blue-and-white ceramic, embedded within an irregular gold structure. Only a small portion of the original image remains visible. The fragment is neither restored nor completed, but presented in its current state: incomplete, exposed, and historically charged.
MATERIAL AND CONTEXT
In this work, gold does not function as ornament or a signifier of luxury. It operates as a structural element that frames the fragment and directs attention toward what remains.
Blue-and-white ceramics played a significant role in early global trade networks, circulating along the same routes as gold, resources, and people. The aesthetic value of these objects cannot be separated from the economic and colonial systems that enabled their movement.
Within the ring, the fragment simultaneously operates as object, historical artefact, and material trace of these circulations.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
For centuries, gold functioned as a measure of power, wealth, and imperial expansion, sustained through systems of extraction and colonial exploitation.
The project Post-Colonial Gold redefines this function. The emphasis shifts from the intrinsic value of the material to the layers of meaning the object carries, including history, collective memory, and human experience.
INTERPRETATION
Objects are often perceived as neutral or decorative; however, many are embedded within complex networks of power and inequality.
By isolating the ceramic fragment within a gold structure, this work renders these underlying layers visible. It does not attempt to resolve them, but instead presents the tension as such.
IN DIALOGUE WITH KARA WALKER
The work can be read in relation to the practice of Kara Walker, who examines how visual culture carries and reproduces the structures of colonial history. Her work demonstrates how aesthetic refinement can coexist with representations of violence and domination.
Similarly, this wearable sculpture operates within that tension. The fragment retains a decorative quality, yet its presentation within gold shifts attention toward the systems that enabled its original circulation.
WITHIN THE PROJECT POST-COLONIAL GOLD
Each wearable sculpture within the series is associated with a human value. In this context, gold no longer functions as a measure of worth, but as a means of revealing what has historically been overlooked or marginalised.
Across the series, value shifts from material to meaning.
ARTIST REFLECTION
The fragment is not restored and remains intentionally incomplete. Gold is not used to repair, but to emphasise and expose.
Discover all 9 wearable sculptures
Tags: #WearableSculpture #PostColonialGold #SculpturalRing #ArtAsObject #GoldReconsidered #RepairAsMeaning #MonumentalMiniature #MaterialAsMemory