Portable Monument - There's no place...

2009-2012

American, born 1964

The starting point for this work by Seattle-based artist Victoria Haven was a handwritten card listing songs on a mixtape made by one of the artist’s friends in the 1980s. Haven enlarged and transferred this ephemeral memento—one both deeply personal and indicative of a broader pop cultural moment—onto a wall of her studio, which she salvaged when the building was demolished for redevelopment. The work is a monument in multiple senses: to a rapidly changing city, to an obsolete technology, and to a moment of music history experienced collectively and personally.

Acrylic paint, sheetrock, studs

92 × 75 × 6 in. (233.7 × 190.5 × 15.2cm)

Purchased with funds from The New Foundation Seattle

2013.1

Provenance: The artist; [Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, Washington]; purchased from gallery with funds from The New Foundation

Photo: Nathaniel Willson

Not currently on view

Resources

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Victoria Haven: Proposed Land Use Action in Elles: SAM – Singular Works by Seminal Women Artists, Oct. 6, 2012 - Feb. 17, 2013.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Sound Affect, Apr. 27, 2019 - Feb. 2, 2020.

Seattle Art Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. We honor our ongoing connection to these communities past, present, and future.

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