Andra Ursuta: Apocalypse Now and Then

Ursu?a's anachronistic artifacts transport viewers into a realm of ancient tropes, grotesque votives and scarred bronze figures

Romanian artist Andra Ursu?a (born 1979) draws from the visual language and display strategies of archaeological museums to invent faux-historical artifacts belonging to a defunct civilization whose relics seem to speak to the anxieties of our present. Apocalypse Now and Then documents the titular site-specific installation in Hydra, Greece, wherein Ursu?a displayed fragments of sculptures and studio detritus that had been successively built up and destroyed with analog and digital tools, including Desolation Ware, a series of lost-wax cast bronze sculptures. In addition to ample installation shots, the volume explores the work's themes-such as the history of object-making and sculpture and the ways in which this manually derived system of knowledge and speculation has come to shape our visual world-in new texts by DESTE founder, Dakis Joannou, curator Elena Filipovic and the artist herself.