Exhibitions / 07
The work after the opening
Five records of tending, repairing and building again.
Look past the inauguration
A housing block often enters an archive at completion. Begin instead with the bridge that must be renewed and the seedling that must be tended. Their records make continued labour part of the subject. The buildings and practices are not technically equivalent; together they ask why the opening photograph so often stands in for the whole life of a project.
The seam and the shared task
Kantha changes worn garments into another useful surface. Sarvodaya describes community work as a contribution to village development. One concerns material reuse; the other concerns organising time and effort. Neither source tells us that sacrifice was equally chosen. Read the skill, then ask what support and power the people doing it received.
A different catalogue entry
Imagine adding to the designer and year the next repair, the available tools and the person able to change the plan. We cannot fill those fields from these sources alone. Leaving them open is a research proposal, not a failure to appreciate the objects.
Things in this room
The renewed Q’eswachaka bridge ↗
Maintenance is the structure
A seedling in the Green Belt Movement ↗
Care that changes the landscape
Kantha, cloth made again ↗
Repair carries another life
Sarvodaya Shramadana ↗
A shared task, a question of consent
WBS 70 housing system ↗
A home, assembled