The Unmade Pavilion (iron)

Rusted cast iron components, 2023

The forms of these cast iron multiples are based on elements of Belgian architect Victor Horta’s plans for an Art Nouveau colonial pavilion at the 1900 Paris World’s Fair. The pavilion was meant to be dismantled and sent to the African colony as offices after the exhibition. Deemed too luxurious to represent a regime under scrutiny for human rights abuses, it was never built. The metal fragments do not slot together and have been rusted to stain their surrounds. Versions of the cast iron multiples were sent to Belgium to reside in the CIVA architectural archives in Brussels.

The Unmade Pavilion (paper)

Pages of the book Lost Libraries, Burnt Archives,
edited by Sindi-Leigh McBride & Julia Rensing, 2023

Lost Libraries, Burnt Archives contemplates what surfaces when a library is burnt, an archive lost, and what emerges from the ashes and ruins.  For this publication, Sindi-Leigh McBride and Julia Rensing invited a number of varied responses to the loss of the Jagger Library archives through a wildfire in 2021.

The pages constituting The Unmade Pavilion (paper) work with the leftovers of the colonial archive and its connotations. Victor Horta’s plans for the 1900 Pavilion were reprinted onto fragile home-made paper, reproducing all of the messiness of the original plans. This print was then given to the editors of the book (based in Europe) to be reproduced as they saw fit.