Sula Bermúdez-Silverman draws our attention to material culture—the world of objects and architecture that surrounds us—illuminating histories that are often obscured or elided even as they are present in our everyday lives. Using iconic forms such as a saddle or a dollhouse, she explores how objects can become symbols, and through transformations of scale and material, she destabilizes the way they represent and narrate the past. The artist employs a variety of specific materials—for instance, sugar and insect specimens—as metaphoric devices to think through colonialism and its attendant ideas and tangible effects, with particular interest in the Americas.

Text from the Hammer Museum