Suffix of Place
On view at Pilot+Projects in Philadelphia, PA
June 18 - July 15, 2022
Suffix of Place is the latest exhibition by collaborative duo N/A (Neeraja D and Ahmed Ozsever). Working across continents, (India, United States) the collaborative practice of N/A repurposes found materials to blur the distinctions between a fictional and an archetypical archive, simultaneously assuming the roles of an archivist and interpreter. Compiling materials to ascertain meaning from remnant documents, their practice is rooted in the attempt to capture and contain language that is written, spoken, translated, and translocated.
In Blue Print/Phrase, Phrasing, Phrased, cyanotypes are produced from used typographic templates as blueprints of an alphabetical matrix, making visible the empty spaces that remain as traces of past communication. Unusable Archives are a series of dimensional collages, objects redacted and coincide to create a curated record that bares the traces of architectural and anthropological research. In the video Hard Copy, the making and subsequent deterioration of a prosaic conversation is retraced through writing and mark-making, emphasizing the process and gestural nature of a correspondence-based narrative.
As an archive attempts to locate history and function as a memory, it becomes a system of complex relationships functioning on the principle of some discerning classification. Yet, N/A particularly ask: is it possible to look at found material beyond the particularities of its discovery, and towards its potential as a mutable history? Retracing prosaic conversations and their deterioration, N/A seeks to establish relationships between language and constructed space through a matrix of communication, pedestrian anthropology, and geography. Their works activate the space between materials and that which is concealed when historical remnants coincide. It is the moment where an echo of an echo creates a new echo, detaching from the memory of its origin, prior to scattering into unrecognizability.