Sawdust, mud. Dimensions variable
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Barbara’s Donkey Altar is a multipart mixed-media installation and audio piece. It is based on objects purportedly found in a concealed storage room behind the closet of Dr. Lupenheimen’s patient Barbara after her death. Barbara’s family is left to reconstruct the reasons and stories behind the unexpected discovery. The objects appear to be part of an altar consecrated to Barbara’s dead husband based on the belief that Barbara’s husband comes back to comfort her in the form of a water stain of a donkey in her cosmetic travel case. This leads her on pilgrimages to find sites claiming relics of the teeth from the donkey that carried Mary and Joseph into Bethlehem and to collect and create objects, including a life-sized sawdust donkey and donkey and tooth-shaped bread, as homage to the donkey.
This piece complicates the idea that people are more accessible when they are living. It addresses an object’s ability to tell stories that are both more and less accurate than the histories people choose to reveal. It addresses the enabling capacity of belief and willingness to see beyond fact.