Assemblage
Photo credit: Jin S. Lee
Accession Number: C.2017.165.2
Dimensions: 12 in X 9 in
Dimensions (Metric): 30.48 cm X 22.86 cm
Dimensions (Metric): 30.48 cm X 22.86 cm
Source: Janet Nolan
Credit Line: Gift of the artist, Janet Nolan
9/11 Mask Reliquary
Description
Assemblage by Janet Nolan titled 9/11 Mask Reliquary (2002). The piece is composed of a pile of used dust masks stacked vertically inside of a glass vitrine.
Assemblage by Janet Nolan titled 9/11 Mask Reliquary (2002). The piece is composed of a pile of used dust masks stacked vertically inside of a glass vitrine.
Historical Notes
Lower Manhattan artist Janet Nolan collected discarded dust masks worn by the recovery workers at Ground Zero. She packed the abandoned masks into a glass vitrine as a reliquary.
Lower Manhattan artist Janet Nolan collected discarded dust masks worn by the recovery workers at Ground Zero. She packed the abandoned masks into a glass vitrine as a reliquary.
Curator's Comment
Janet Nolan, an Alabama native, gravitated to New York City to live and work after studying painting and drawing at Georgia State University. Well before 2001, she took advantage of lower Manhattan’s then-relatively affordable studio spaces, leasing a ground-floor studio on Warren Street in Tribeca. Although she continued to paint, a new body of three-dimensional work emerged after she settled downtown, consisting of sculptural assemblages created from cast-off objects Nolan rescued from the trash or found on the sidewalks and streets as she moved about the city.
Nolan was at her downtown studio on September 11th, and remembered the chaos, fright, and debris that descended on the neighborhood as the Twin Towers burned and collapsed, with evacuees streaming north to safety. She, too, left Tribeca for uptown Manhattan. Days later, she returned to Warren Street under official escort and quickly resumed art-making as a therapeutic release for the collective trauma she and so many others had experienced.
With eyes already attuned to the potential aesthetic interest of material abandoned on city streets, Nolan took notice of refuse she was beginning to spot outside her studio, attributed to the arrival of emergency responders to Ground Zero. An idea was born, culminating in the two compositions Nolan has offered to the 9/11 Memorial Museum.
The process mirrored her work on related sculptural assemblages of repeated singular objects found in the everyday world. However, there was nothing mundane about the rescue workers’ gloves and masks. Nolan experienced them as poignant reflections of both the singular and shared resolve to undo the great pain inflicted by the terrorist attacks and their inconceivable consequences at the Twin Towers. Perceiving sanctity in this mission, the artist developed a relic-like reverence for the disembodied paraphernalia associated with that attacks.
HIDE
Janet Nolan, an Alabama native, gravitated to New York City to live and work after studying painting and drawing at Georgia State University. Well before 2001, she took advantage of lower Manhattan’s then-relatively affordable studio spaces, leasing a ground-floor studio on Warren Street in Tribeca. Although she continued to paint, a new body of three-dimensional work emerged after she settled downtown, consisting of sculptural assemblages created from cast-off objects Nolan rescued from the trash or found on the sidewalks and streets as she moved about the city.
Nolan was at her downtown studio on September 11th, and remembered the chaos, fright, and debris that descended on the neighborhood as the Twin Towers burned and collapsed, with evacuees streaming north to safety. She, too, left Tribeca for uptown Manhattan. Days later, she returned to Warren Street under official escort and quickly resumed art-making as a therapeutic release for the collective trauma she and so many others had experienced.
With eyes already attuned to the potential aesthetic interest of material abandoned on city streets, Nolan took notice of refuse she was beginning to spot outside her studio, attributed to the arrival of emergency responders to Ground Zero. An idea was born, culminating in the two compositions Nolan has offered to the 9/11 Memorial Museum.
The process mirrored her work on related sculptural assemblages of repeated singular objects found in the everyday world. However, there was nothing mundane about the rescue workers’ gloves and masks. Nolan experienced them as poignant reflections of both the singular and shared resolve to undo the great pain inflicted by the terrorist attacks and their inconceivable consequences at the Twin Towers. Perceiving sanctity in this mission, the artist developed a relic-like reverence for the disembodied paraphernalia associated with that attacks.
HIDE
