This public program invites experts from various disciplines into Gala Porras-Kim’s exhibition, Precipitation for an Arid Landscape, to describe, interpret, and question how objects are used to narrate divergent points of view on complex situations in which partial information and a desire for closure converge. By layering insights from multiple frames of reference and knowledge production, including conservation, music, ecology, poetry, law and anthropology, the program seeks to ask: how do we—and how could we—speak about, for, and to objects, and for what or whose benefit do we speak?

The exhibition walkthrough with the artist Gala Porras-Kim and conservators Annika Finne and Emily Frank focuses on the notion of instability. Looking at the ancient objects brought forth by Porras-Kim’s works, the conversation explores the cultural narratives these objects represent and help construct, which are neither uniform nor static. The conservators reflect on the various ways in which these artifacts might have been manipulated and conserved during their lifespans. Through a speculative exercise, the artist and conservators ask: How can instability be cultivated and cared for? How might the unstable material nature of archaeological artifacts entwine with an unstable conceptual understanding of them?

This is an in-person event. Free and open to the public.

Image: Gala Porras-Kim. One Bag of Miscellaneous Spearheads and Sticks, 2009