"For my show in November [1992], I wanted to engage the New York art world specifically about its current events, including my place in those events. I also wanted to do some pieces that I had been wanting to do for a while. But I didn’t know how to put any of it together, so I made Caliban into a visual artist. I created a fictitious archive of Caliban’s drawings, letters, and sculptures as a way to explore the Third World artist in contemporary art practice. I fictionalized the fiction, in a sense, to talk about my observations about somebody else." [full text here]
Caliban is a character from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest.
>Jimmie Durham, Untitled, 1992.Mixed Media, brass, mud, glue, wood, 49.2 x 38.4 x 6 cm.
>Jimmie Durham, Untitled, 1992.Mixed Media, papier mâché, marble dust, wood, 38 x 25 x 11 cm.
>Jimmie Durham, Untitled (Caliban's Mask), 1992.Sculpture, glass eyes, button, mud, pvc pipe, glue, 24 x 16 x 5 cm.