BRIGITTA VARADI: MARKING MEMORY

BY ANDREA ALESSI

This essay was first published in the ArtSlant Prize 2016 Catalogue, on the occasion of the ArtSlant Prize Shortlist exhibition at SPRING/BREAK Art Show, from February 28–March 6, 2017. Brigitta Varadi is the ArtSlant Prize 2016 Grand Prize winner. Other ArtSlant Prize 2016 catalogue essays: Tiffany Smith & Sterling Crispin

'In some way, all things are congealed moments in a longer social trajectory. All things are brief deposits of this or that property, photographs that conceal the reality of the motion from which their objecthood is a momentary respite.

—Arjun Appadurai, “The Thing Itself” [1]

To hear Brigitta Varadi talk about sheep is to hear her effuse about something bigger than wool, felt, or the declining carpet and farming industries in the remote corner of North West Ireland where she lives. Her animated descriptions of how highland farmers mark and identify their sheep spin into ruminations on knowledge, memory, commerce, and social relations—and how each may be sketched onto downy fleeces or mapped onto the rural landscape. '  Read the full essay: please click here