This Week’s Picks: Opening Reception for Ghalib El-Khalidi’s “A Cabinet of Curiosities” at Paia Tattoo Parlor, Sept 10
This Week’s Picks
Friday (September 10), 7-10pm, Paia Tattoo Parlor, Paia, Free
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“The museum is a 17th-century innovation in the Western world, born out of the cabinets and collections of merchants and explorers,” write Jane Gregory and Steve Miller in their book Science in Public: Communication, Culture, and Credibility (2000). During the Age of Exploration in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, oddities collected by world travelers — and the baroque way in which they were displayed — became popular among posh Europeans, and have since been known as ‘cabinets of curiosities’ (and true to the etymology of “cabinet,” often comprised whole rooms, rather than simply pieces of furniture). “A compilation of remarkable things was attempted as a mirror of contemporary knowledge, regardless of whether those objects were created by the genius of man or the caprice of nature,” writes Wolfram Koeppe in a thematic essay for The Metropolitan Museum of Art (e.g. the platypus was first written off as a hoax). Paying homage to both the style of cabinet curiosities and it’s fantastical nexus, Ghalib El-Khalidi — a Palestinian-American science illustrator — has created a collection of sculptures and drawings of an imagined natural history. Explore El-Khalidi’s work, including polymer clay sculptures of creature heads and pencil drawings of imaginary insects and anthropomorphized animals, at his first solo exhibition, hosted by the Paia Tattoo Parlor. The opening reception is slated for Friday night, with the showcase running through October 7. 808-579-8515; paiatattooparlor.com [by Anu Yagi]
