⤶

All That Is Seen and Unseen
2018

Sugar as a memory.
Salt as an image.
Skin as a witness.
Hair as a timeline.
Light as a reflection of all that is seen and unseen.

In this project, Avakian examines printed books as sculptural objects of multiple layers of inscription. Books are symbols of history and are imbued with the weight of culture and authority. They are also a repository of sedimentations and traces, including oils and salts left by human touch. Avakian devises a series of protocols, procedures and rituals to extract and bring to light latent layers of incidental inscriptions and markings that are reminiscent of palimpsests. In a series of different artifacts, some layers are made visible, while other layers are separated from the book object to be transferred into new artifacts. These artifacts include; Iconography (2018-2019), Residual Histories (2018), Biting the Skin Around My Nails (2018-ongoing), Memorandum (2018), The Book of Books (2018-2019), and Codex (2019).