While I was resident at the American Academy in Rome (AAR) in 2022, I had access to small, ancient objects in the collection drawers there. I could turn these artefacts over in my hand, rotating them around an axis of figuration, materiality, devotion, production, description, and museum trade. I was initially drawn to the hand-sized, terracotta votive figures, many of them made headless by the impacts of temple cleaners, farmers, looters, and time. In other drawers I found small, terracotta, bodiless heads. The series of gouache and graphite drawings on Claybord shown here perched on skeletal wooden plinths combine all these forces with my own desire to play the role of animateur.
When I wasn’t wondering about the hollows of the AAR’s votive figures, I was led along other paths outside the AAR where I found Rome to be a continually evolving theatre of its own past. One blue-sky day, I meandered through the Baths of Caracalla, built around 211–217 AD and abandoned in 537 AD. I was dwarfed by these well-maintained ruins, punctured with gaping holes that let the blue through. Each step I took refreshed the shape of the spectacle.
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