Objects for the American Resistance
From Mapping Through… , the 2025 Grad Showcase at the George Bingham Gallery, University of Missouri:
Mapping through unrest : “Objects for the American Resistance”
Mapping through unrest : “Objects for the American Resistance”
This work is an homage to Cecilia Vicuña’s 1970s series of small sculptures or precarios, “Diary of Objects for the Chilean Resistance.” Vicuña drew on traditions of folk magic and Chilean material culture to create powerful, political talismans from everyday found materials. She typed this description onto red cloth: “The objects try to kill three birds with one stone, politically: stand for socialism / magically: help the liberation strug[g]le / aesthetically: be as beautiful as they can to reconfort [?] the souls. give strenght [sic]”
In a similar moment of turmoil and upheaval, I fashion small objects which speak to my own experiences of change, anxiety, and ideology. Like Vicuña’s originals, and consistent with many traditions of folk magic, the intent behind some pieces is transparent, while others remain opaque. Choice of material and imagery contributes to meaning; refinement of technique and execution is secondary to material signification and the maker’s self-expression.
The printed text which is worked into several of these objects was clipped from a State Historical Society of Missouri (SHSMO) reprint of the earliest extant copy of the Missouri Gazette, dated 1808, documenting news from the Missouri territory in the early American republic. The numbered items are transcribed lines from an Independence Day toast. 250 years after the start of the American Revolution, I reflect on our country’s complex, problematic past and invest magical intention in my hopes and fears for our uncertain, collective future.
Emily Patton Smith
