POTLATCH is based on a photograph I took on a visit to the British Museum. Initially, I was drawn to the tension between two contrasting cultures and economies: at the bottom, a commodity shelf typical of a market economy; above it, a totem pole from the Haida people, whose ceremony for the giving away of wealth — the potlatch — is a paradigm of a gift economy. While the commodity shelf refers to the impersonal exchanges of the market, carried out by people who don’t necessarily know each other, the redistribution of wealth performed during the potlatch is central to establishing the status and social position of its participants.
The drawing also points to the definition of culture and the role of its caretaker: the museum. The refrigerator seems to double down on the museum’s function of preserving and displaying artifacts. Placed next to the museum shop, the similarities between the consumption of goods and the presentation of culture become quite evident.
