For Frieze London, Towards is pleased to present a solo exhibition of recent work by Maria Trabulo.
Maria Trabulo’s multi-disciplinary practice explores the role that images and artifacts play in shaping both our personal and collective memory. Her work examines the ways in which artifacts accrue meaning, and how shifting cultural, political, social, and economic conditions impact this.
At Frieze London, Trabulo will debut a new body of work titled The Spared Museum. Developed over a 3-month residency at the Bode Museum in Berlin, Trabulo worked alongside museum conservators and staff to documented and catalogue various damaged and disappeared artifacts as a result of the second world war.
The last known images of many of these artworks and artifacts date to the 1920’s, when the museum undertook a cataloguing of the collection. Statues, coins, and artworks spanning from the 7th century
BCE through the Byzantine Empire, the Renaissance into the 18th century were photographed for records
to be made.
Today, the photo negatives for the over 700 works from the Bode Museum that were either destroyed or disappeared are all that remains. Despite having survived the many horrors of the 20th century, the photo negatives have not been able to defy the passage of time. 100 years after their creation, many are fractured, discoloured and slowly disintegrating. With their disappearance, so goes any remaining trace that these artifacts ever existed.
Through her work, Trabulo draws attention to the fragility of cultural history–highlighting the important stories embedded in these artifacts as well as drawing attention to the ways in which selective social and geopolitical events shape both our understanding of the past, and impact how we might think about the future.
