Stone carving and perfumery are both slow, deliberate, and ancient practices, but what else do they have in common? Certainly, they are time-consuming, and depend on inherited and learned traditions and techniques, but more than that, Maruyama asserts, working with stone and scent means that time must be understood as the most significant artistic material available.
In this performance-lecture, Marianna Maruyama will elaborate on the processes behind her artworks currently exhibited at Sapieha Palace, including the half-ton marble sculpture Arts of Subtraction, located just outside of the entrance of the palace, and the more ephemeral work Incense Clock, which is dispersed throughout the interior of the palace. She will offer a short history of incense and the tradition of incense clocks in East Asia, and connect them to a broader 17th Century European context.
Maruyama’s works call attention to time’s materiality, heritage, presence, and loss through the so-called mute sense of scent, in dialogue with louder (much heavier) displays of physical deterioration and transformation in marble. These inherent contrasts and contradictions are characteristic of her practice, which traverses the spaces of writing, sound, sculpture, and performance.
The event will be held in English. Entrance with the Palace visitor’s ticket.