Personal Effects, 2016 / Mixed media installation / dimensions variable
Portal Art Fair at Federal Hall National Memorial, New York City / organized by 4Heads
This installation in Federal Hall’s ground floor rotunda is part of an ongoing series of stuffed objects/environments (“Safe Keeping”). It is sited between the windows and the columns, adjacent to the display of crates illustrating the building’s history as a U.S. Customs House. This project addresses Federal Hall’s specific role (among its many layers of history) as primary port for goods entering the United States between 1842 and 1862. Customs administration changed locations several times after 1862; in 2003 it merged with the Immigration and Naturalization Service to form one new government agency: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with jurisdiction moving from the Treasury Department to the Department of Homeland Security.
Controlling the movement of goods and the movement of people are no longer two distinct functions. Instead, a single agency now determines what goods and what people can enter the United States, and at what costs. “Personal Effects” addresses this conflation of goods and people with highly personal, idiosyncratic assemblages of domestic objects: furniture, appliances, kitchenware, toys, trophies, sports equipment, electronics, etc. etc. They are stacked and clustered in configurations with multiple reference points: a cramped NYC apartment, a storage unit, a homeless person’s encampment, a grandmother’s attic, a hoarder’s lair, a refugee camp, etc. The installation is a dramatically over-stuffed, yet relatable, domestic tableau. The stacking, packing and stuffing of objects into vessels and containers recalls the movement of goods that this building once administered. It connects this history of importing goods with today’s crisis-conditions of people (and their personal goods) moving between borders: an absurd, exaggerated vision of personal belongings camped out in the (former) Customs House.
Personal Effects, 2016
Personal Effects, 2016
Personal Effects, 2016
Personal Effects, 2016
Personal Effects, 2016
Personal Effects, 2016
Personal Effects, 2016