Mixed-Media Assemblage

Overview

Fifteen People examines how identity is formed through the accumulation of relationships. Fifteen individual Data Framed works—each dedicated to a single person and accompanied by its own soundtrack—are arranged into a unified field while remaining materially and narratively independent. Constructed upon TWA Hotel stationery and composed from Rimowa typographic elements, each portrait reduces a person to a small constellation of forms, references, and memory rather than attempting literal representation. Family members, close friends, and former partners exist together without hierarchy, each occupying an equal position within the larger structure despite their differing roles in the artist’s life.

The installation concludes with a stack of books that forms the dot of the assemblage’s exclamation-point structure. These volumes are devoted not to real individuals but to fictional ones—including James Bond, Harry Potter, Batman, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe—suggesting that fictional characters participate in the construction of identity alongside real relationships. A Corgi model of James Bond’s BMW 750iL from Tomorrow Never Dies and a James Bond coat-of-arms ornament complete the structure, extending the field beyond biography into cultural inheritance. Fifteen People proposes that a life is authored not by a single self, but by the people—both real and imagined—who continually shape it. It does not represent relationships. It performs accumulation.

Metadata

Artist
Seth / Ezra Dager

Year
2025–2026

Medium
Mixed-Media Assemblage

Status
Complete

Archive
Human Archive

Location
The Rigley Field

Components
Fifteen individually Data Framed portrait works on TWA Hotel stationery; Rimowa typographic elements; handwritten Data Frames; stack of books; Corgi Tomorrow Never Dies BMW 750iL model; James Bond coat-of-arms ornament.