German archeologists have contributed immensely to the study and preservation of ancient cultures, but at the same time expropriated indigenous cultural assets in a typically colonialist manner. From this perspective, the museum’s exhibits manifest the complex ethical issue of cultural preservation involving the marginalization and erasure of that culture. During the war, a Turkmenistan carpet was moved from the museum collection to safer storage in a warehouse in the outskirts of the city. Nevertheless, it was damaged in one of the last bombing raids. Years later, it was restored and displayed again in the same museum. As Schlesinger observes, the disaster paradoxically gave the object new life, and as a rule – a disaster that ends the original purpose of an artifact gives us viewers an opportunity to discover hitherto hidden qualities. After its burning, the carpet lost its original role as an artistic asset representative of a foreign or even oriental culture and gained additional meanings which echo the difficult historical events whose memory and implications cannot be erased. In the act of reconstructing the disaster that befell the carpet we can see not only the end of the object itself, but also that of the problematic conception which had guided the establishment responsible for it, and more broadly, the state responsible for both.
Schlesinger uses fire in many of his works. He states that he does so like he would use any other material, except that in each work, it serves a different purpose. Sometimes, fire highlights a functional aspect of the work, and sometimes a paradoxical one. In the present work, the artist harnesses fire to the potential charged with in it in a fascinating way. Having placed the rolled carpet over the open flame, his control over the end result became fairly limited. The burnt holes gaping randomly across the carpet are a physical illustration of a senseless offensive and violent act, articulating it as a central axis in the piece, in both form and content.

Courtesy of the artist and Dvir Gallery

Less Reading...