Translating World (2020)

The inside cover is a black-and-white photo of the Atun Cathedral sculpture of Judas Iscariot being hanged by demons. Mounted on top of this is a box covered with a black-and-white anatomical model of a human head with the skull cut away to reveal the brain. This box is open at the top and contains three removable vials. Two of the vials contain a card with a row of cuneiform characters. The third contains a card with an English translation of the other two cards. Pasted directly above this box is a paragraph about the etymology of the word “macaber.” On the bottom left of the inside cover is a large letter E in a red oval. The frame of this piece is covered with a black-and-white photo of a fancy private rail car. The central image of the piece is a cropping of the early fifteenth-century painting by Robert Peake of a young Henry, Prince of Wales, and his horse. Pasted across the bottom of the painting is a vivid color photo of one of the Sinagua cliff dwellings. Flanking the portrait are two plastic graduated cylinders filled with pieces of crushed colored glass. A chain is draped across the top of this section pinned to the sides with upholstery tacks. Hanging from the chain are a hand-hewn brass bell and a replica hammer cut out of tin. The inside side panels are etched illustrations of an armored soldier on the left, and a captured sailor on the right. The inside frame top is a panel of mirror, and the bottom of this section is covered with a blue wallpaper swatch with a paisley design. A narrow gap between the top section and the bottom of the whole frame contains two narrow book-like fabrications covered in green paper and wrapped in a wide, russet-red ribbon. Each of these “books” opens to a collage of a section of a map of the Northeast seaboard on the left inside cover and a snippet of text from a grammar primer on the right. In the back of this narrow gap where the books are held, is the text, “Which Animals May Live Here.”