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Tattoo

Item date(s): 1996

Robbin Ami Silverberg


Pages: unpaged
Size: 100mm square
Edition: One of three copies


Place publication: Brooklyn, NY
Publisher: Dobbin Books
Exhibition 2022

Additional notes:
Box structure with white and brown eggshells both within and on the cover.

"Tattoo is an early example of artwork that tries to encapsulate the idea of the artist book by focusing on the object’s materiality. It has an eggshell mosaic covering its outside and a pulp-sprayed flax paper with embedded half eggshells within. When the viewer opens its cover, the half-shells fill its inner volume. The idea of the "book" is effectively defined by this small book-object: a container of precious information, symbolized by the egg, another precious container.

One added complexity is that the box can reverse itself so the paper with embedded eggshells becomes the outside. This option reverses a book’s protective role, due to its fragility & sense of exposure."

"When I editioned the original artist proof, I added another layer to its content, by writing numbers on several of the shells’ surfaces. Suggestive of the tattooing of numbers in WWII, this provocation questions how a number can further extend meaning."

Exhibition notes:
Creative Research: The Artists’ Books of Veronika Schäpers, Robbin Ami Silverberg and Julie Chen JBCBA, WAM

22 September to 15 December 2022

Ref: GB/7406









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