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Reliquary XX–XXI
Version 6: Bird Conclave
2025 (since 2009)
Like Broodthaers’s fictional museum – Musée d’Art Moderne – Département des Aigles (1968), where the eagle symbolized institutional critique, the instability of value, and the constructed nature of authenticity – this reliquary functions both as a structure of memory and as a critical gesture, invoking the logic of collection and the fetishization of truth. It questions the very possibility of representation and the mechanisms of historical selection.
* This reliquary was created specifically for Survival Kit 16: House of See-More, held in Riga (August 30 – September 28, 2025), curated by Slavs and Tatars and Michał Grzegorzek. The curators proposed the allegorical figure of the Simurgh – a mythical Sufi bird of multiplicity and revelation – as a central theme for the exhibition. In the tale of Attar, the birds gather in search of the divine, only to discover their own reflection. The work draws on this metaphor to reflect on death, dispersal, and the collective gaze.
Reproductions
Contents of the Reliquary Compartments