Let us gather in a flourishing way

Sculpture

-

DePaul Art Museum

Name/Title

Let us gather in a flourishing way

Entry/Object ID

2017.08

Description

A piece of crumpled copper curved into an open cylinder. The inside is a dark brown to black and the outside is bright copper.

Artwork Details

Medium

Travertine, oxidized copper

Context

Harold Mendez’ work Let us gather in a flourishing way combines marble, flower petals, and a copper mask to create an installation that is both a memorial and a monument. The work’s title is borrowed from a poem of the same name by Juan Felipe Herrera, the first Mexican American U.S. poet laureate, with melancholy allusions to perseverance. The slab of marble references the materials of monuments, which historically withstand the passage of time, while the white carnations, used by indigenous Mexicans to honor the dead, gradually decay and must be replenished while the work is on view. The tension between permanence and ephemerality culminates within the pre-Columbian death mask, which is presented upside down and filled with water, symbolic of both death and renewal.

Acquisition

Accession

2017.08

Source or Donor

PATRON Gallery

Acquisition Method

Purchase

Credit Line

Courtesy of PATRON Gallery and the artist

Made/Created

Artist

Mendez, Harold

Date made

2016

Ethnography

Notes

NA US

Lexicon

Nomenclature 4.0

Nomenclature Primary Object Term

Sculpture

Nomenclature Class

Art

Nomenclature Category

Category 08: Communication Objects

Getty AAT

Concept

Latin American, Americas, The, installations (visual works), visual works (works)

Hierarchy Name

Styles and Periods (hierarchy name), Visual Works (hierarchy name), Visual and Verbal Communication (hierarchy name)

Facet

Styles and Periods Facet, Objects Facet

LOC Thesaurus for Graphic Materials

Death mask

Dimensions

Dimension Description

overall

Length

6 in

Exhibition

LATINXAMERICAN

Interpretative Labels

Label Type

Object Label

Label

Harold Mendez (b. 1977) Let us gather in a flourishing way, 2016 Travertine, oxidized copper reproduction of a pre-Columbian death mask from the Museo del Oro (Bogota, Colombia), water, carnations Collection of DePaul Art Museum, Art Acquisition Endowment Fund, 2017.8 A first-generation American artist born in Chicago to Colombian and Mexican parents, Harold Mendez creates sculptures and installations that investigate the intersection of identity with historical narratives and cycles. Borrowing its title from a poem by Juan Felipe Herrera, Mendez explores the tension between fiction and truth, visibility and absence, with an interest in how constructions of history and geography shape our sense of self. A crumpled, copper copy of a pre-Columbian death mask from the Museo del Oro in Bogota, Colombia, is set upon a slab of travertine marble, a material often used for monumental sculpture. The mask is filled with distilled water, in which visitors may see their own face reflected, and is replenished throughout the run of the exhibition. White carnations are scattered across the travertine, evoking rituals of birth and death. Meaning “heavenly flower” in Greek, carnations symbolize love and innocence and are said to have sprung up from the Virgin Mary’s tears upon witnessing Jesus’ crucifixion.