Withholding: a reading room for the Archive of Constraint
2021
installation of sculptural and photographic works with archival objects, video, and assemblage
ASU West Gallery at Arizona State University, New College
Glendale, AZ
Withholding: a reading room for the Archive of Constraint is a temporary site for study; a resting space within and among the undercommons, it is an active performance of refusal and fugitive planning. Drawn from objects and ephemera held within the Archive, this project traces the ongoing legacies of carceral systems from colonial occupations and their image-making practices. As an expanded, experimental site of performance whose relics are composed of objects, videos, and images, the Archive maps the contours of corporeal colonization found throughout vernacular images and ephemera of colonial material culture. The work of and inside the reading room thus lingers on two central questions: how do we outline the conditions of looking? and further, what are the edges of possession (and sovereignty) in the aftermath of colonial extraction?