Presented By: Department of American Culture
Afterthought: Remembering a Pandemic
Exhibition: “Half Built House” by Laura Taylor
About the exhibition:
In “Half-Built House,” Brazilian-American artist Laura Taylor grieves the loss of her childhood friend Tina to COVID. When COVID took Tina’s life, Taylor started ordering identical versions of their childhood games and toys on eBay. As she assembled these objects, Taylor recalled a memory of climbing with Tina through the skeletal frameworks of unfinished houses in the 1970s. Late at night, the girls would pick their way through floorless rooms and speculate about their future inhabitants. In this spirit of imaginative experimentation, Taylor began taking apart her eBay acquisitions. Gathering, breaking, sawing, splicing, painting, gluing, layering, and reassembling these toys became, for her, a way to probe the complicated nature of a lost friendship and to explore the multidimensional nature of grief. Ultimately, Taylor built the framework of an unfinished house to evoke those she once explored with Tina. Taylor describes the house as a “container for grief.”
September 28 - October 27
Opening & Reception: September 28, 1-3pm
GalleryDAAS
About this series of events:
Art & Resistance Fall 2023 Theme Semester Programming
Sponsored by Arts Initiative, UMMA, American Culture, Latina/o Studies, the Department of Film, Television and Media & the Museum Studies Program
Presented by Charlotte Juergens, 2nd year Ph.D. student in American Culture
http://bit.ly/UMafterthought
In “Half-Built House,” Brazilian-American artist Laura Taylor grieves the loss of her childhood friend Tina to COVID. When COVID took Tina’s life, Taylor started ordering identical versions of their childhood games and toys on eBay. As she assembled these objects, Taylor recalled a memory of climbing with Tina through the skeletal frameworks of unfinished houses in the 1970s. Late at night, the girls would pick their way through floorless rooms and speculate about their future inhabitants. In this spirit of imaginative experimentation, Taylor began taking apart her eBay acquisitions. Gathering, breaking, sawing, splicing, painting, gluing, layering, and reassembling these toys became, for her, a way to probe the complicated nature of a lost friendship and to explore the multidimensional nature of grief. Ultimately, Taylor built the framework of an unfinished house to evoke those she once explored with Tina. Taylor describes the house as a “container for grief.”
September 28 - October 27
Opening & Reception: September 28, 1-3pm
GalleryDAAS
About this series of events:
Art & Resistance Fall 2023 Theme Semester Programming
Sponsored by Arts Initiative, UMMA, American Culture, Latina/o Studies, the Department of Film, Television and Media & the Museum Studies Program
Presented by Charlotte Juergens, 2nd year Ph.D. student in American Culture
http://bit.ly/UMafterthought
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