“Collection” is a series of five sculptures imagined as models for critical mediation. These prototypes are slightly modified versions of a corresponding artefact on display in a given European institution, including Altes Museum and Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, Dommuseum Salzburg, and Vienna’s Heeresgeschichtliches Museum.
By taking these antique, ethnological, ecclesiastical and military relics and reproducing them in Fuzinato’s chosen material of cheap, affordable and biodegradable cardboard, these interactive, light and mobile objects are freed from their institutional context. Unbound by the sanctity of museum walls, the deconstruction of these objects’ history, representation and knowledge is activated.
“Collection” employs the specific artistic method of ‘copyism’—as established by Belgrade conceptualist and “former artist” Goran Djordjević. This opens the artefacts to new meaning and application outside of the material heritage of the museums themselves. Because they can be handled, altered, removed and reproduced by anyone, each object exists beyond the institutional collection, which is generally inscribed with a specific meaning that reinforces a dominant cultural narrative. The ways in which these are exhibited and organised in relation to other objects holds great power in terms of attribution and knowledge transfer. Hence, the systems and structures of meaning these objects hold can be mapped and manipulated depending on how they are arranged in relation to each other and their established significance within history. By casting a critical eye on these arrangements of social, cultural and political agendas, “Collection” problematizes the established norms of institutional representation in the European historical, ethnological and artistic canon.