Mixed-Media Assemblage

Overview

Becoming, Discovering, Curating examines how identity is shaped through successive acts of accumulation, recognition, and selection. The work is organized across three independent metal fields—Becoming, Discovering, and Curating—each identified by its own Data Frame while functioning collectively as a single progression. The first field preserves moments of formation through photographs, correspondence, and early relationships. The second expands into discovery, including an original photograph of Tilda Swinton taken by the artist in 2009 at Père Lachaise Cemetery moments before she signed the front page of his dated Moleskine journal. That same journal rests inside a Hidden NY cardboard sleeve atop a wooden chair from The Rigley Field, while an Instax photograph taken from the vantage point of the work reveals the signed pages within the visual field of the installation itself, allowing the journal to become both artifact and clue. The final field presents a curated structure assembled from the accumulated material that precedes it, demonstrating that identity is not merely experienced but continuously organized. The chair forms the dot of the exclamation point established by the three fields above, preserving the journal rather than displaying it openly. Becoming, Discovering, Curating does not narrate a life. It performs the process by which one is continually authored.

Metadata

Artist
Seth / Ezra Dager

Year
2025–2026

Medium
Mixed-Media Assemblage

Status
Complete

Archive
Human Archive

Location
The Rigley Field

Components
Three metal fields (Becoming, Discovering, Curating); Data Frames; original photograph of Tilda Swinton; signed and dated Moleskine journal; Hidden NY cardboard sleeve; Instax photograph documenting the journal in situ; photographs of relationships and travel; international correspondence; curated photographic field; wooden chair from The Rigley Field.