Untitled (Scatter Piece)

Untitled (Scatter Piece), 2013, string of pearls without pearls
Nieuwenkamp & Zaalberg Collection

 

A display case that looks like a regular jeweller’s cabinet or like one showing artefacts in an Ethnological Museum for instance, or Natural History. Pearls start as tiny pieces of dust inside an oyster. Hardly something, an irregularity in the oyster’s system. A white cube can be like a shell. The little knots in the thread, used to isolate the individual pearls, look almost like the beginnings of new pearls. Around somebody’s neck the knots would slowly grow, building layer upon layer of grease, skin particles and small fibres of clothing until they produce something that could resemble pearls. It’s a fault in the system, a mistake that is not eliminated or ignored, but intensified, amplified.