Borrowing its title from a collection of essays edited by Lorraine Daston, Things That Talk summarizes our interactions with objects through and in the absence of language. Through their use, transformation and history, objects become charged with cultural association and meaning. Even when familiar, objects have a physical presence that demands our bodily interaction. Much of Nathalie Du Pasquier’s work calls us to pay attention to objects of the everyday—things we often overlook and begin to “not see.” In her expansive oeuvre of paintings, drawings, and furniture design, utilitarian objects and imaginary forms are elevated to a point where they form their own dialogues and histories. Found objects such as bricks are placed beside paintings and ceramics in separate rooms that function like different parts of a city. Installed in the exhibition as a total environment, Du Pasquier’s objects begin to speak to each other across space, time, and genres of her nearly 40-year career.
This tour will introduce Du Pasquier’s work and career with an emphasis on the ways in which objects of the exhibition interact with each other and with us in the abstracted space of painting and in life. Participants will engage in a process of analyzing these interactions together in the space of the exhibition with the aids of storytelling and visual memory games.
This event is free and open to the public; register here.
Adrien Sun Hall is an MFA candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. Interested in the symbols and histories embedded in the body and cultural objects, Hall works through sculpture, installation, and performance to investigate the collision between diasporic and nationalistic identities. Hall’s current work borrows from languages of architectural design, theatre, and cultural studies and makes use of the absent or displaced body to highlight experiences of hypervisibility and invisibility. Originally from Toronto, Hall has a background in design practice and research and holds a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from the University of Guelph.
