Stephen Eakin, Trying To Save It All

“At the origin of painting and sculpture there lies a mummy complex. The religion of ancient Egypt, aimed against death, saw survival as dependent on the continued existence of the corporeal body.” —Andre Bazin, The Ontology of the Photographic Image

The imbuing of meaning in an artwork is parallel to the imbuing of memory in objects. Art is fundamentally linked to mortality and our relationship with time. These elements affect and complicate the value of objects.

Stephen Eakin mines and removes objects from personal history and familial narrative, subsequently placing them in a setting that redefines them as precious relics, art objects, or both. This action posits the politics of memory, history, and our identities after we are gone. Eakin experiments with an object’s context (or lack thereof) in an effort to seek where the object’s voice meets the voice of its viewer, if at all.