The Parliament of Things

About

The Parliament of Things explores the way in which we relate to objects, bringing together works by artists who can be seen to question western philosophical conventions that privilege the human subject over the inanimate object. Taking its title from a proposition by the French philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour, who advocated a ‘democracy of things’ – breaking down the hierarchy between people (culture) and the world (nature) – the exhibition responds to the recent philosophical shift away from understanding objects as mere projections of the human mind. By placing inanimate things at the centre of their investigations into our relationship to the material world, the artists consider how our understanding of objects is framed and the symbolic transformations that they undergo throughout their existence. The exhibition will include sculpture by Pedro Barateiro (b. 1979, Almada), Mariana Castillo Deball (b. 1975, Mexico City), Christodoulos Panayiotou (b. 1978, Limassol) and Lucy Skaer (b. 1975, Cambridge); films by Simon Martin (b. 1965, Cheshire), Melvin Moti (b. 1977, Rotterdam) and Paul Sietsema (b. 1968, Los Angeles); and a new commission by Maria Loboda (b. 1979, Kraków), which will be made in Colchester over the course of the month leading up to the exhibition.