The Interpreted Object

A short essay by Brunella Baldi (Cartavetra Gallery, Florence, Italy) and an artists’ statement introduce sixty-four b&w images of objects, each with a corresponding poetic text, that represent the body of work from The Interpreted Object. Originally an installation, this work by collaborators Patricia Silva and Lyall Harris finds form in an artists’ book.

In The Interpreted Object, forgotten objects find new artistic and poetic expression. The artists searched for quasi-obsolete objects where the original purpose or use had been lost. The “action” intrinsic to the object—a knife cuts, a spoon stirs—was therefore also lost, which allowed the artists to assign new actions (“title” verbs), according to what they perceived to be the “spirit” of the object. Along with the verbs came poetic phrases that further interpreted the objects and imbued them with meaning. Verbs and phrases found form in corresponding booklets, one for each object. Through this process of (re)discovery, Silva and Harris revisit, in new ways, familiar themes of motherhood, loss, memory, and relationships.

This artists’ book presents a compilation of the objects and texts in a single publication.