Ruth Ewan's Revolutionary Calendar Installation at São Paulo Biennial
Ruth Ewan's 'Back to the Fields' (2015/16) features 360 items that align with the French Revolutionary calendar and is currently exhibited at the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo from 10 September to 11 December 2016. This installation was initially commissioned by Camden Arts Centre in London in 2015. Each item symbolizes a day from the calendar that was established following the 1789 French Revolution, which was utilized from 1793 to 1805 and briefly reintroduced during the 1871 Paris Commune. The calendar substituted saints' days with names of various plants, animals, and tools. Ewan shares her process of acquiring objects such as a winnowing fan, mandrake root, and live crayfish, examining alternative notions of time and the physicality of historical narratives.
Key facts
- Ruth Ewan's 'Back to the Fields' includes 360 objects from a Revolutionary calendar.
- The calendar was used in France from 1793 to 1805 and briefly in 1871.
- The installation is at the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo (10 Sep–11 Dec 2016).
- Originally commissioned by Camden Arts Centre, London in 2015.
- Objects include a pickaxe, plough, yew tree, potato, saltpetre, winnowing fan, woad, mandrake, pig, crayfish, scurvy grass, ash, and more.
- The calendar was created by politicians, mathematicians, poets, and astronomers after the French Revolution.
- Months were renamed after natural phenomena like rain, snow, fog, and flowers.
- The work includes live plants and animals, highlighting the tension between institutional control and natural temporality.
Entities
Artists
- Ruth Ewan
- Chris Fite-Wassilak
- Fabre d'Églantine
- Antoine-Augustin Parmentier
- Benjamin Franklin
- Antoine Lavoisier
- King Louis XVI
- Marie Antoinette
- Karl Marx
- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
- Walter Benjamin
- Herbert Marcuse
- Sanja Perovic
- Maurice Bichard
- Crayfish Bob
Institutions
- Afterall
- Camden Arts Centre
- Bienal de São Paulo
- Dundee Contemporary Arts
- Royal Horticultural Society
- London Zoo
- Automat Museum Karlsruhe
- Friends of the People Society
Locations
- São Paulo
- Brazil
- London
- United Kingdom
- Paris
- France
- Dundee
- Scotland
- Dorset
- Karlsruhe
- Germany
- Ibirapuera Park
Sources
- Afterall —