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Untitled

Untitled

(American, born in 1956)
1993
Medium/TechniqueLinen collar with hand-sewn white horsehair alphabet in maple and glass case
DimensionsOverall diameter approximately 50.8 cm (20 in.); collar diameter approximately 10.2 cm (4 in.); case size 55.9 x 55.9 x 17.8 cm (22 x 22 x 7 in.)
Credit LineContemporary Curator's Fund, with funds donated by Barbara Fish Lee and Thomas H. Lee
Accession number1995.119
On View
Not on view
ClassificationsSculpture
Description

"Textiles are making skins, and skins are about that border, that permeable edge of the body."

 

Hamilton often uses organic materials like fabric or hair to address issues of memory, loss, protection, and vulnerability. For her, language is the key to retaining ideas and culture, symbolized here by the hand-sewn alphabet along the inside of a collar. In contrast, horsehair around the outside is wild and untamed. The labor-intensive tidiness of the sewn alphabet and the free-flowing outer ring evoke tensions between minute, controlled actions and surrounding chaos that are recurrent in Hamilton's work.

ProvenanceThe artist; with The Fabric Workshop, Philadelphia; to MFA, Boston, 1995.
CopyrightCourtesy: the artist & Sean Kelly Gallery, New York