The Innate Artistry of Inarticulate Materials

Abstract

Dust, debris, trash, waste—we produce it in exponentially increasing quantities. We sweep it up, vacuum it, shake it off, and carry it away, somewhere out of sight; yet it always threatens to return: an uncontrollable, inarticulate material that eludes immediate perception. Artists, however, have helped us confront our anxieties and instinctive aversion to this inchoate matter by giving it symbolic form, enabling us to see it differently and to recognise its power and potential. 
This essay considers, among others, J.M.W. Turner’s 1816 sunset paintings, which register the atmospheric effects of a massive volcanic eruption; Vik Muniz’s Pictures of Dust (2000), created from dust collected from the vacuum cleaners of the Whitney Museum; Jenny Holzer’s Dust Paintings (2014), inspired by the Arabic “ghubar” (“dust writing”) and based on heavily redacted reports on the Afghan War; and Kristin Jones’s Eternal Tiber (2005), monumental she-wolves formed from dirt and dust along the Tiber’s embankment, a reverse-graffiti technique later employed by William Kentridge in Triumphs and Laments (2016) in Rome.