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December 2, 2010

Monique Garcia: Vitality Retainer



The experience of the object lies outside the body’s experience; yet, as the body itself is fragmented, the object comes to function as an extension of the self. The object has the ability to make concrete the ephemerality of experiences that inform the interiority of the self. The leather wallet is an object that carries documentation of our social identity as well as our economic identity, and the material of leather has a relationship to the flesh and age of the body. As a vessel it is an object that stands as a fleshy extension of the body, containing and preserving forms of identity. The wallet plays on the metaphor of energy as money as well as the energy of the food chain made tangible through both animal and human skin. I am interested in the properties of accumulation, duration, and inscription that play in the collaboration between objects and bodies. The wallet is a poignant example of containment of remnants and traces that imply an absent body, as well as the object’s ability to stand in for the body.

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