Gala Porras-Kim, 109 west Mexico ceramics from the LACMA collection: Colima Index, 2017. Graphite, color pencil, and ink on paper mounted on canvas, mahogany artist’s frame. 73.5 x 133.5 x 3 in (187 x 339 x 8 cm)
Spring 2021
Restitution and the rights of objects
Running from May to July 2021, Delfina Foundation’s third iteration of Collecting as Practice brings together international and UK-based creative practitioners to explore the agency of artists and objects, unpacking the ways in which collections are shaped, maintained and framed.
Grounded in current and urgent debates around representation and restitution, the selected Collecting as Practice participants offer nuanced approaches to the remediation of colonial and contentious heritage, using means such as the poetics of language to unpack complex traumas and proposing new forms of commemoration. Their practices reconsider Western notions of conservation and ownership in relation to communities and spiritual rights of objects. Addressing and studying the archive and museological systems of categorisation they question who has the right to describe and identify.
Once again, Delfina Foundation has invited Rose Lejeune to collaborate with our team to realise this season, in which the international and UK associate artists will be working in collaboration with UK and international institutions, archives and collections, incubating durational research, challenging institutional strategies and laying the foundations for future interventions. The season’s residency programme will also give rise to a diverse public programme, and these outcomes will be expanded on in Collecting as Practice Season 4 in autumn 2021 featuring additional artists and public programming.
International residents
UK associates
Public programme
PLATFORM
Selected outcomes and documentation of the programme.