13 International Dogs

2019

Interested in how museums construct art-historical narratives, Gala Porras-Kim incorporates objects from museum collections into drawings that are at once humorous and critical. 13 International Dogs may appear deadpan in its seemingly clinical representation of variously animated ancient canines from global art history, but Porras-Kim looks insightfully at the ways the meanings of objects change when they enter different spaces and different histories, especially through the conceptual work of an artist. Have museums artificially separated historical objects from contemporary art? What happens to the meaning of both when they become part of an integrated conversation?