“The Particular Past” explores the spaces between knowledge and belief. By rewriting and reimagining past and present, the artists in the exhibition embody the political and cultural moment where expertise, truth, and even the past are malleable. Shifting between witness and advocate, these artists alternately illuminate and gaslight their way through a conversation on the value of knowledge.
Professor Johnson’s “Strewn” shows pigs in a field of books, rooting around, eating, lounging in a muddy library. He notes about this piece that “In fiction, swine have acted as agents of both revolution and repression; in reality, they have been agents of anti-intellectualism. During Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia, the National Library was used as a stable and piggery. Its books fueled cooking fires, their pages rolled for cigarette papers. The uneducated were glorified – as they are in other countries today.”
The exhibition is on view February 14 through May 20.