Among My Many Failures — Anna Campbell

^{Among My Many Failures}

projection of a close-up of a plaster saddle being sawn in half by a slight figure in gingham leather chaps; the image is projected onto a screen above a dated Native American diorama and the sawn saddle is now int he diorama itself

detail shot of a plaster cast of a saddle that has been sawn in half is set into a diorama, adjacent a mural of canoes that share a formal resemblance

silhouette of a slight figure and a stack of dishes in front of an orange background, rear-projected into the window of a cabin

projection of a slight, slumped over cowboy figure onto a shed with a semi-transparent orange organza screen

^{For the collaborative work Among My Many Failures, I constructed elaborate sculptural props including a woven leather pair of chaps and a plaster simulacra of a saddle. Footage of a cowboy figure using those props in the Native American dioramas of a partially abandoned natural history museum was re- projected into nearby exhibit space. A silhouetted settler engaged in domestic chores in a video by collaborator Chele Isaac was rear-projected in conversation with these props and videos; their redistribution within the site created a meta-text that played off the historical and spatial context of the museum. Viewers pieced together a counter- narrative to the story originally told by the dioramas; by problematizing these depictions of a contested period of American history, this work appropriated some of the tropes of heroic narratives, and engaged the viewer in unraveling an otherwise easily digestible site for “truth” as defined through the authority of a museum exhibit.}

^{plaster saddle, 3 channel video installation
dimensions variable
2010}