Benjamin Dearstyne Hoste

Handle With Care​ requires participation: the work must be lifted, held, and moved. While each box has the same dimensions and weight, looks can be deceiving. Through physical contact, and the labour required to manipulate each box, the work invites the viewer turned participant to reconsider our tightly held but often overlooked assumptions that shape our perceptions, experiences, and understandings.

Used for shipping, moving, and storage, the corrugated cardboard box is as familiar, mundane, and ubiquitous as any cultural object today. Shopping online, moving cross country, clearing out one’s desk, sorting through the possessions of a deceased relative–in each use case the unassuming, utilitarian cardboard box not only holds but also absorbs its contents. It is an empty vessel in which we can put our stuff, but also pour our feelings and memories.

This tension between the physical and metaphysical is mirrored by the presence of the physical boxes and the projection–the physical boxes are passive but activated through experience while within the projection the boxes are activated through movement but are passively viewed within the gallery space.

As one manipulates and moves the boxes within the gallery space, a projection demonstrates possible configurations and uses enabled by the boxes. The shared as well as unique qualities of each box present both expected and unexpected opportunities, encouraging one to let their imagination stretch beyond what may be physically inside towards all the possibilities engendered as a consequence.

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6/6 exhibition postcard

The mathematics of permutations, and the consequences of such arrangements, sit at the heart of this work. By reworking quite possibly the most immortal of American phrases—All Men Are Created Equal—to sheer and utter exhaustion, Immortal Declaration interjects tension while inviting the viewer to reconsider the irrefutable and inherent structures of power that underpin American life.