Distributed Monuments, American Academy in Rome

Presented by Sapar Contemporary on the occasion of Abu Dhabi art (2022)

Sapar Contemporary is pleased to present Distributed Monuments: American Academy in Rome by Jorge Otero-Pailos, an exhibition of new works presenting dust extracted from the America Academy in Rome courtyard where the artist completed the Roy Lichtenstein residency earlier this year.

About the work, Elizabeth Rodini, interim Director of the Academy, writes: 

Jorge Otero-Pailos works in latex casts, a conservation method used to remove dust and debris from historic monuments. During his Residency at the American Academy in Rome, he made casts of the building’s surfaces—including floors, architectural details, and the spolia-studded walls of the courtyard—which were then placed in a gigantic, back-lit frame. The casts preserve the topography of these surfaces along with the dust that had settled on them, re-presenting the longitudinal history of a building and its environment.

At the conceptual core of this work lies the matter of permanence. Monuments like those that define Rome were built to endure. But Otero-Pailos reveals the contingency of every surface, including those of monuments: they become dust just as they accrue it. “Buildings,” he says, “lend recognizable form to a dust that was formless and chaotic.” In the end, it is dust that remains—including the debris created by human activity and industry. Traces of ancient Roman silver mining still apparent in the ice packs of the Arctic, for example, suggest that pollution itself is the most lasting of human creations.

There are ethical implications to this vision, underscoring our responsibility to the environment in the short and long term. But the implications are also spiritual, beyond time and our ability to measure it. The dust that surrounds us also is us. It makes up buildings and falls away again into the atmosphere, reminding us of stardust and the materiality of creation itself.