THE KEEPER OF WHAT REMAINS

I started with Mask (Buk, Krar, or Kara), a Torres Strait Islander ceremonial mask from probably Mabuiag Island, dating to the mid–late 19th century. Made from materials including turtleshell, wood, cassowary feathers, fiber, resin, shell, and paint, the mask is associated with ceremonial traditions and is surmounted by a bird.

That bird became my point of departure.

I imagined it coming alive and carrying the mask through time.

Rather than placing the mask in a single new environment, I built a continuous journey through different works from The Met's collection—moving through sculpture, ancient fresco, historic interiors, Renaissance architecture, landscapes, nineteenth-century painting, Impressionism, Pointillism, photography, and Romantic painting.

The bird and mask remain together throughout.

They don't change into something else. The world changes around them.

The architecture changes.

The landscape changes.

The light changes.

The atmosphere changes.

The visual language changes.

But the bird continues flying, carrying the same mask from one world into another.

That continuity is the heart of the piece.

I wanted the journey to feel less like looking at a sequence of artworks and more like passing through centuries of art history in a single uninterrupted movement.

The bird stays near the center as the environments transform around it. Each transition is a continuation of its flight rather than a reset, so the viewer is always following the same traveler.

The mask becomes the constant.

It is carried from one period to the next, through radically different spaces and ways of seeing, until the journey eventually reaches the present.

The bird emerges into a museum and approaches Edgar Degas's The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer.

It does not transform.

It does not disappear.

It simply releases the mask.

The mask comes to rest on the Little Dancer.

That final moment is the reason for the entire journey.

For me, the piece became a meditation on how history survives time.

We move through different eras. The way we see changes. The environments around us change. Art changes.

But some things are carried forward.

The bird is the journey. The mask is what remains.

ORIGINAL MUSEUM PIECE Mask (Buk, Krar, or Kara) Torres Strait Islander, probably Mabuiag Island Mid–late 19th century The Metropolitan Museum of Art https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/311950

FINAL DESTINATION The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer — Edgar Degas Modeled c. 1878–81 The Metropolitan Museum of Art https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/196439

PUBLIC FLORA CANVAS https://app.flora.ai/join-project/71bb6232-69ae-44cf-989d-21b45ef5e015

ARTWORKS / WORLDS REFERENCES Antonio Canova — Perseus with the Head of Medusa Cubiculum from the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale Bedroom from the Palazzo Sagredo, Venice Worsham-Rockefeller Dressing Room Platter, follower of Bernard Palissy Boiserie from the Hôtel de Cabris, Grasse Patio from the Castle of Vélez Blanco Albert Bierstadt — The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak Winslow Homer — The Veteran in a New Field Thomas Eakins — Max Schmitt in a Single Scull William Merritt Chase — At the Seaside George Caleb Bingham — Fur Traders Descending the Missouri Martin Johnson Heade — Approaching Thunder Storm Vincent van Gogh — Wheatfield with Cypresses Georges Seurat — A Sunday on La Grande Jatte study/version Gustave Le Gray — The Great Wave, Sète J. M. W. Turner — Whalers / The Whale Ship