Packaged

Engraved glass, porcelain, cardboard box installation, 2021

Nina Gross

In this immersive installation, the audience are taken into a blacked-out space, one at a time, and lead by torchlight around a pile of cardboard boxes, marked with tape and a chaotic scrawl of text. Resting on top of these boxes are shards of broken glass embedded in blocks of white porcelain clay. As the torch swings over the pieces, etchings of faces and fragments of text momentarily become illuminated. A ghost-like portrait fleetingly repeats across shattered fragments, reflected across multiple planes. This is an image that haunts me, my sister staring out of her Missing Person’s poster. Shadows and glints are cast unpredictably as the torch interrogates the space. The glass etchings offer an ethereal glimpse of a lost identity.