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| High Reliefs. Plaster and sandstone mouldings of plastic bags Camille Henrot, 2009 |
'This project brings together two sovereigns of time: geology – the result of a huge length of time -- and the short-lived moments in which a plastic bag takes a given shape before time sweeps it into another. It is literally anachronistic by design. Spatially, the pieces combine two scales: the smallest detail and geological erosion. The project is both anecdotal and historical: the slightest anecdotal object becomes historical with time. Time transforms objects and gives value to the most common objects, but they are doomed to disappear in the long run. This work is connected to Egyptian art; high-relief art appeared before low-relief art. Just like Egyptian art was about surviving through time and extending life in a static eternity, the plastic bag is doomed to survive in a momentary shape. G. Didi Huberman's organic interpretation of plasticity may elucidate the work further when he says plasticity “brings body and style together in the same question of time: survival and metamorphosis will eventually characterize the eternal return itself, shape calling to the shapeless”.
Henrot's reliefs of the plastic bag, a fossil of modern material can somehow relate to my own project Woeman. There, by combining modern language on the surface of a historic building is somewhat similar to the concept of the modern material de-bossed on the sandstone. In my case, language is embossed on the stone to give a sense of the detachment of the female identity conversing with these buildings where as High Reliefs are being plastered inside to give a feeling of historic bond with the material.
