SHARP
SHADOWS:
afterworks
Year:
2023–ongoing
Category:
Suspended sculpture / altered book.
Medium
Altered nineteenth-century book (A History of Architecture), drilled perforations, metal eyelets, translucent nylon cord, insulated copper wire (red), stainless-steel micro hardware, fishing line suspension, spotlight.
Dimensions (approx.)
Object (book + cord volume):
• 70 × 130 × 45 cm
• 27 ½ × 51 ¼ × 17 ¾ in
Book (closed body):
• 24 × 16 × 5 cm
• 9 ½ × 6 ¼ × 2 in
Weight (approx.)
• < 3 kg / 6.5 lb
Edition
Unique piece (1/1).
“To change the world, you have to change the story.”
— Naomi Klein
Sharpshadows: Afterwork extends the installation Sharp Shadows into its core, transforming the banister-book into a new history that is being rewritten with underrepresented people. The book is drilled, wired, and held in suspension with these new stories: a transformation of the installation at its maximum reduction, the demonstration, the proof that the book once existed in space as an active agent in architectural writing. The cords are the same ones used for the strings that cross the room; their zigzag patterns work through Donald Kunze’s concept of the katagraphic cut, showing how the sacred cut is also a social differentiation and a limit—a thin incision that lets us see both sides. A few red wires mark “hot” routes through the canon, like emergency circuits. This is a theoretical project disguised as an object: the sculpture treats the book as a model of architectural history that can be rewired, its argument rerouted through the very material that once guaranteed its authority, now expanded toward a new authority in which marginalized cultures are included.
