— Charles Sandison
Internationally renowned for his animated digital projections, artist Charles Sandison is installing a site-specific artwork created for the Peabody Essex Museum's East India Marine Hall. Sandison's work activates the words of 18th-century ship captains' logs to create an immersive environment drawing upon the trade routes, politics, competition and voices that led to the founding of the museum and the origins of PEM's remarkable collection. Organized by PEM's Curator of Contemporary Art, Trevor Smith, this installation marks the first in a series of contemporary art interventions in PEM's FreePort initiative.
Launch Party
The PEM will celebrate the launch of the new Contemporary Art Initiative FreePort and the installation of Sandison's Figurehead at a launch party on Friday, October 1. Admission is free, but please RSVP on the museum's Facebook page. The party starts at 8:00 and features DJ Flack, dancing, a cash bar, and dessert. Attire is cocktail/contemporary.
Visit pem.org for more information on FreePort, Sandison, and everything else happening at the PEM!
The panel shown (left) is an exceptional example of Maya sculpture depicting a ruler known as Tajchanahk, "Torch-Sky-Turtle," seated on a water lily throne in the royal court, while simultaneously inhabiting the subtle, watery realm. A bubbling stream delineates the space with stylized foliage anchoring the corners. This work suggests that for the Maya, the realms of earth, sea, sky and cosmos may have been perceived as flowing into each other, rather than as distinct territories of being.
realistic and supernatural all at once. Objects in this section portray a wide array of fish, frogs, birds and mythic beasts inhabiting the sea and conveying spiritual concepts. This effigy of an actual Caribbean spiny lobster (shown here) is the only known Maya representation of the creature. The object was excavated in 2007 from one of the oldest sites in Belize, populated for over three thousand years. It dates from the turbulent early colonial period when traditional Maya life was besieged by incursions of Spanish soldiers and missionaries. A plugged cavity bearing a stingray spine, three shark teeth and two blades of microcrystalline quartz hint at blood sacrifice. The head emerging from the mouth may be the face of a Maya deity.
For the Maya, water was a source of material wealth and spiritual power. All bodies of water ─ rivers, cenotes (deep, inland pools) and the sea ─ were united, and all could be traversed to a cosmic realm. This magnificent head is a Belize national treasure, and one of the most exquisite works discovered in the Maya world. Weighing nearly ten pounds, it was created from a single piece of jadeite, the color of which was directly associated with the sea. Likely carved in Guatemala and transported by canoe to Belize, this sculpture is a complex depiction of a deity with the eyes of a sun god. It was found in the tomb of an elderly man, likely cradled in his arm upon burial at the sacred site, Altun Ha.
The final section of the exhibition addresses the cyclical motion of the cosmos as the Maya experienced it. The sun rose in the morning from the Caribbean in the east, bearing the features of a shark as it began to traverse the sky (it only had these features in the early morning). Cosmic crocodiles exhaled storms and battled with gods of the underworld. This elaborate censer (shown right) portrays a deity central to a creation myth from Palenque, Mexico. Water curls on his cheeks and shell ear ornaments linking him to the rain god, Chahk, speak of his connection to the watery world. A shark serves as his headdress topped by a toothy crocodile. From this censer, ritual smoke curled through the city of Palenque, suffusing it with scent and mystery.
