Over the course of a lengthy and meticulously documented investigation, the artist has reconstructed the history of an archaeological fragment from the ruins of the Achaemenid palace of Persepolis, in Iran, which was looted from the site in 1936, acquired by a Canadian museum in the early 1950s, stolen, rediscovered and finally returned to its country of origin—only to inexplicably disappear again.
Half of the Red Sun examines the question of the restitution of cultural treasures pillaged during the colonial era and the responsibility of museums with regard to the vast numbers of artefacts that have been exported illegally from their country of production and distributed across the world, depriving local populations of their cultural heritage.
This installation combines a large assemblage of interconnected objects and images—archival documents, a 19sth-century lithograph, limestone rubble, sculptures, a video—that all provide clues to the vanished object and its turbulent history. Viewers never see the relief that inspired the work: its presence is felt only through its absence, its spectre, the space it once inhabited.
