In her latest sculpture series, Heritage Studies, Iman Issa explores the contemporary resonance of historical artifacts. The three sculptures in this gallery take inspiration from objects the artist encountered in museums. To accompany her historical riffs, Issa provides museum-style didactics that reference their original sources, identifying material, time period, and provenance. Rather than describing the objects in the gallery, the artist's texts point to her historical inspiration. Operating at the junction where the contemporary objects and their historical contexts meet, Heritage Studies proposes a new iconography that is shaped by an alternative reading of official history.
Gallery label from Unfinished Conversations, March 19-July 30, 2017.