Camille Henrot - Prehistoric Collections

Based around an out-of-print anthology devoted to prehistoric collections unearthed by archaeological expeditions in Algeria, French artist Camille Henrot's latest project treats this ethnographic material as motifs of a contemporary grotesque. The scientific document - photographs, diagrams, and captions - becomes part of a layered array incorporating traces of our present age: humans, animals, plants, minerals, and other objects. Freely mixing the pre- and post-historic, archaic and actual, Henrot constructs an exploration of human bodies, information media, and meaning using dated pornography, technological refuse, tools and instruments, signs, and more.