Delusion of Permanence (installated at PRACTICE Gallery, Philadelphia)
2021
latex paint
dimensions variable
Delusion of Permanence is an ongoing project in which I investigate and refigure a series of found designs from an obelisk in the royal gardens at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, Austria. The obelisk was built for the royal family of the Habsburg Empire and features a series of relief carvings clearly modeled after Egyptian hieroglyphs. It was created at a time in history when European fascination with ancient Egypt was on the rise, but before the heightened period of 'Egyptomania' that followed Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt from 1798 - 1801. I’m interested in how the colonial empire that created this object sought to root its legacy in ancient Egypt, which at the time was seen (in Europe) as a kind of ideal ancient civilization. The Hapsburg empire sought to associate itself with Egypt, perhaps to create the impression of a direct link between the two. Ironically, by mimicking hieroglyphs inaccurately, they made their “illiteracy” obvious to those who can read hieroglyphic text. I worked with a professional epigrapher to create vector drawings of the hieroglyphs to the standards of academic archeological research and have reworked them to respond to this space.
