EXHIBITION STATEMENT

This series of artworks grows out of the artist's fascination with reliquaries: the jewel-covered statues and treasure chests, where remains of sainted persons -- from bones, to scraps of clothing, to vials of blood -- are enshrined. Old, beautiful, and mysterious, reliquaries often become objects of worship themselves. The impulse to preserve and make precious seems to represent a common human urge, spanning across many cultures, and not only confined to religion: we create reliquaries for vanquished cultures in our Natural History Museums, and living reliquaries, in the form of zoos, for animals all but extinct in the wild.

Whereas a reliquary represents the end of a worshipper's pilgrimage, these works are an entry to contemplation, rather than its terminus, and provoke questions rather than provide answers. Do we value things more in these contained and decorated settings than in their natural state? Why do we make such efforts to "preserve" what is gone, instead of conserving what we still have? Can we venerate the living as well as the dead, the natural rather than the supernatural?