Rusty Odyssey

The trajectory of copper traced through the essay and the field research took the form of an exhibition. Some things are hard to convey in words alone: the slow pace at which copper oxidizes, or the enormous weight of history held in a single small coin. The exhibition set out to make these felt intuitively, inviting visitors to let their bodies dwell in the material's time as they looked.

The dark room was lit only by the video. Projected onto the sand covering the floor, the copper looked like a geological surface oxidized in several different stages.

The material's slow breath carried on into a tank filled with water. Copper coins lay submerged in it, and the shifting image of copper played across the surface above them. Visitors threw their own coins into the water and watched them settle among the rest. The water became a medium that crossed time and space, carrying forward a narrative not fixed to any single place.