Rachel Libeskind: Archive Fever
NADA House 2021
Colonels Row, House 405A
Governors Island, New York
May 8 – August 1, 2021
Opening Day:
Saturday, May 8, 2021
11:00am - 5:00pm
signs and symbols is pleased to participate in NADA House 2021, the third edition of the New Art Dealers Alliance's collaborative, public exhibition on Governors Island, with a solo presentation of Rachel Libeskind: Archive Fever in House 405A. Featuring installations in over 50 rooms in three neighboring turn-of-the-century colonial revival buildings, NADA House 2021 opens concurrently with the beginning of Governors Island’s 2021 Public Season and will run through the summer.
Archive Fever is an immersive collage installation by Rachel Libeskind that continues the artist's ongoing project The Secret Life of Photographs, an homage to Aby Warburg's 1924-29 map of images Mnemosyne Atlas. Warburg's unfinished endeavor attempted to trace the “afterlife of antiquity,” or how images of great symbolic power emerge in Western antiquity and then perpetually reappear in later contexts. In response, Libeskind has been accumulating and subsequently deconstructing the "usefulness" of photographs as artworks, journalistic tools and objects of intimacy. Sourced from both print and digital ephemera, the subjects of her installation are as sprawling as human life, from suburban architecture and family photos to astronomical bodies and horticulture.
The resulting nonlinear mural has neither beginning nor end — the viewer may step in or step out at any point within the story. Libeskind has also placed images on the floor of the room, inviting people to experience the visual narrative of the collaged landscape from different vantage points.
rachel libeskind is a multidisciplinary artist whose research-based practice examines the construction of history and the enduring power of images. Working across collage, installation, video and performance, Libeskind appropriates and recontextualizes images in order to disrupt imposed boundaries — between the personal and public, ancient and contemporary, societal and cultural — and reveal unexpected parallels. Libeskind has presented solo exhibitions, installations and performances at Center for Jewish History, New York; Watermill Center, Long Island; Pioneer Works, Brooklyn; Bombay Beach Biennale; and Mana Contemporary, Miami. She has also been included in group exhibitions at institutions such as ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe; Alabama Contemporary Art Center, Mobile; Carpenter Center at Harvard University, Cambridge; and National Media Arts Festival of Lithuania, Vilnius. She has been awarded residencies and fellowships at Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, Kaneohe; The Watermill Center, Long Island; Long Road Projects, Jacksonville; and The Scuola di Grafica, Venice, Italy. She holds a B.A. with honors from Harvard University. Born in Milan and raised in Berlin, Libeskind is now based between New York and Germany.
