This table that can seat 12 is a translation of many tables. Usually, the feet of these types of lion foot tables are placed turned outwards. I have turned them so they face forward and are in pairs, side by side. Central to my themes was the objectification of people in service to social structures, an essential objectification of people to the structure of society that goes acknowledged visually and materially. It struck me that the most menial and unacknowledged jobs involve a very close contact with people that enjoy the service but the labours go unrecognized. Similarly, when you sit on a chair, you have very intimate contact with the chair, but you rarely look at the chair before sitting down and letting it bear your entire weight. The table is in translation in that it is in a state of becoming. The top of the table is open negating it's original purpose and affording us a view of the work going on below. To look down is like looking into the hold of a ship or a container which is smuggling or transporting people. The legs are individuated, but the figures remain faceless, and their torsos are also out of sight. The figures have a presence that demands a kind of attention when you go up to the table the table truncated your body at much the same place as the legs under the table. While researching woodworking and joinery to make this table, I discovered that many woods-joins, in fact, reference the human body. Only such joins are used to translate this table. Only the but to butt join, the mortise, and tendon, lap join, and tongue and groove joins are used. This table is an archive of the work of many tables, and people as furniture, in service, and a simultaneous expression of emerging individuation within a collective.
In Print in ELSE Journal, shown at Santorini Biennale.
