‘To some degree, the histories of displaced objects are analogous to human displacements, migrations and exiles.’
History begins with the vanity of kings is a replica of The Taylor Prism (691 BC) which was acquired by the British Museum in 1855. The text inscribed on the original prism details war campaigns said to have been brought by the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal against the kingdom of Judah and Israel. In Guendelman Hales’ version, this original text is in dialogue with two narratives from the same territory in modern-day Iraq: a text taken from Dabiq, an online magazine used by ISIS for Islamic radicalisation and recruitment, and extracts from George W. Bush’s address to the nation during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.
Rafael Guendelman Hales is an artist who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from Universidad Catolica de Chile (PUC) and with a Master degree in Situated Practice at University College London. He has a diploma in Film Theory (PUC) on Contemporary Arab World at Universidad de Chile and has participated in the Art residency programs of ZK/U in Berlin and Laznia in Gdansk, Poland. Rafael has received the National Art Funds of Chile (FONDART) several times; the Art Funding of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DIRAC) and the National Scholarship for Master Studies (CONICYT). His works have been exhibited in several art spaces and video festivals both in Chile and abroad.
Rafael’s work focuses on the research of certain contexts and stories, and the relation of humans with their territory in constructing identities. In that sense, his projects are linked to both political and social processes, and to personal memories and marginal events; and the ways in which they can be narrated through art.
More info: www.rafaelguendelman.com
The insertion of new text into the Prism’s original shape works as a form of temporal montage that creates a sense of disruption. As Jane Rendell says in Art and Architecture (1), the type of operation that puts together ‘what has been and the now’ allows the creation of a space in between past and present, where the repressed historical aspects of objects and sites can emerge.
(1) Jane Rendell, Art and Architecture, A Place Between (I.B Tauris. 2006).
Michael Rakowitz, The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist (2018) (Art Installation/Site specific)
Shelley Sacks, Project Exchange Values: Images of Invisible Lives (Ongoing project) (Art Research project)
Hello World: Revising a Collection, exhibition, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, 2018. (Art Exhibition/Project)
