RECURSIVE ARCHÆOLOGY
2 Feb - 4 Mar, 2023
Recursive Archeology is the first presentation focusing on the artist’s engagement with archeological ruins. In light of the unfolding global climate catastrophe and its devastating effects on our physical environment, Daedalus’ ongoing investigation explores a series of related questions: What do we seek to salvage? Why must we maintain it? What strategies and materials have arrived to us from disrupted and “lost” societies? And importantly, how do modes of inquiry predetermine the pasts we uncover?
As comparative study of material culture through the lens of archeology, the artworks in the exhibition deploy archeological methodologies to investigate the discipline’s own history–from the advent of art history to the present–while pointing out to the disparate ideological motivations through which archaeology has been applied to since its formalization as a discipline.
At the epicenter of the exhibition stands the eponymous work Recursive Archeology (2023), a monumental table displaying one hundred artifacts organized by stylistic affinities and eras; tracing the ancestral use by earlier civilizations of bones, stones, and shells, and their adaptation into new materials, such as metals, ceramics, or polymers, this artwork highlights how material culture adapts to changing conditions, while questioning the ways in which knowledge shapes our understanding of an ever-changing past and present.
The 4K HD video Recursive Archeologies (2023) focuses on Daedalus’ excursion to Ciudad Perdida, an archeological site uncovered in Colombia in 1974. As Ciudad Perdida becomes a burgeoning tourist site, the artist asks, what role do archaeological ruins play in the construction of a national identity?
