In our increasingly fast-paced digital age, it\u2019s rare to see young artists engaging with ancient history \u2013 where once art students would spend hours painstakingly learning traditional techniques and studying the art historical canon, these days many art schools actively encourage their students to think outside the box, to experiment with bold concepts and embrace emerging technologies in a quest for the new. But not Gala Porras-Kim, the Colombian-born, LA-based artist who\u2019s quite literally taking an old-school approach to things, and whose work is currently on display at New York\u2019s Tina Kim Gallery.<\/p>\n
Porras-Kim\u2019s work traces the line between art and artefact, between anthropology and art. \u201cMy sister\u2019s an anthropologist,\u201d she tells SLEEK. \u201cAnd I\u2019ve always been interested in how undocumented objects get documented, and then legitimised.\u201d It\u2019s the motivation behind Porras-Kim\u2019s quirky eBay-sourced artifactual works, comprised of pieces that she bids on, and then recontextualises. \u201cIn the US you can buy artefacts,\u201d she stresses, \u201cwhich is insane to me!\u201d She points to one such object, a ceramic fragment, apparently from the South West, mounted on a graphite \u201cblob\u201d (her word, not mine) purely because \u201cthere\u2019s no bigger likelihood that the original was not this shape.\u201d<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":false,"settings":{"fit_width":"4","caption":""}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":"
It\u2019s this quirky re-envisionment of the anthropological that allows Porras-Kim to frontline the often ridiculous (and defunct) nature of the ethnographic approach, where the question of legitimacy and documentation are inextricably tied. \u201cThe project has a lot of documents,\u201d Porras-Kim explains. \u201cIt has the eBay receipt where it says like \u2018two grandmas collected it in the South West\u2019. And then there\u2019s this certificate of authenticity \u2014 but it\u2019s the sketchiest looking certificate. I\u2019m interested in why that feels sketchy, when we don\u2019t actually know. And why the conservator form from the Fowler museum at UCLA looks super-legit. What documentation will make a historical fragment seem more legit than not?\u201d<\/p>\n
As Porras-Kim is quick to point out, this process of legitimisation is often a Western construct, or a way that non-Western artefacts find meaning through validation by the West. It\u2019s the message behind her language-based works \u2013 and the most intriguing of those on show at Tina Kim \u2013 which centre on the Mexican Zapotec language. As a purely tonal language, Zapotec exists only in speech, and is often communicated through varied whistling sounds. However, it\u2019s currently being translated into a written dictionary in a project funded by the US government. \u201cIt\u2019s so backwards!\u201d Porras-Kim exclaims. \u201cIt fundamentally does not translate into writing.\u201d It\u2019s an arguably pointless exercise. \u201cIf you want to keep this language alive, don\u2019t write a dictionary \u2014 get all the grandmothers in the town and teach them how to teach it,\u201d Porras-Kim suggests. \u201cSo many of the people that speak it are illiterate, so they wouldn\u2019t even be able to tell you if it was right when written down!\u201d<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":false,"settings":{"fit_width":"4","caption":""}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":"
But what may be a useless endeavour for the Zapotec-speaking community has been a critical point of entry for Porras-Kim. Though her original intentions for learning Zapotec were less visionary \u2014 \u201cI just wanted to know if my UCLA co-workers were talking shit,\u201d she laughs \u2014 her learning process has manifested in works which confront the so-called crisis of anthropology. \u201cIt\u2019s about what happens when the form doesn\u2019t match,\u201d she explains. \u201cHow can you take this abstract idea and make it into something solid within your own rigid context?\u201d It\u2019s something that Porras-Kim is good at, and which characterises her work. From her reconstructed grass basket to the aforementioned ceramic shard rehoused in a blob, Porras-Kim moulds her own speculative histories for fragments from a forgotten past.<\/p>\n
Gala Porras-Kim\u2019s work is on display at Tina Kim Gallery, New York until 3 August. The group show also features work by E.J. Hill, Carolina Caycedo, Beatriz Cortez, Rafa Esparza and Patricia Fern\u00e1ndez.<\/em><\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":false,"settings":{"fit_width":"4","caption":""}}]},"yoast_head":"\n