All are welcome to join us after artist Mary Mattingly's Stamps Lecture (5:10pm at Rackham) to celebrate the opening of her latest installation, at the Institute for the Humanities gallery through Dec. 15.

Studying the production, distribution, and use of Cobalt was the starting point for this exhibition. From craft objects to Impressionist painting and the contemporary Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye, Cobalt Blue has a significant art history. What does it mean though, to work with materials that are both seductive and linked to contemporary forms of violence? If the exhibition is a form of storytelling – what do these objects say?

Because of their ubiquity, the objects in the exhibition may veil their colonial histories, but in their modern replications, they implicate users in a massive extraction-based neocolonialism that can be deadly to the humans working in and living near mines. This is an extraction that also sacrifices the land, water, air, and animal life for economic gain.

The exhibition includes photographs and objects, many are transformed through boxing, bundling, rolling, cutting, stretching, and crushing; all techniques used to alter Cobalt.