Maeve Brennan | Kent Chan | Jala Wahid
Echoes from the Vaults
On the High Line at 14th Street
Screens daily starting at 5pm
Demands for the repatriation of artifacts held by Western museums have intensified in recent years, reflecting a growing movement to decolonize institutions and properly acknowledge the origins of these objects before they were associated with a price tag or a display case. The underlying reality is that artifacts are often victims of illicit trade and criminal networks; they’ve been looted or extracted from their home, and their identities forgotten, lost, or hidden. Echoes from the Vaults brings together works by three artists that tell these objects’ stories using narrative tools and themes more likely found in horror films than heroic fairy tales. Maeve Brennan’s An Excavation, Jala Wahid’s I Love Ancient Baby, and Kent Chan’s Shivers similarly employ close-cropped camera shots, dissonant sounds, and pulsing rhythms to evoke an unsettling sensation in the audience. By referencing varying states of limbo—a common metaphorical tool in horror films—the films depict purgatorial worlds both real and imagined.
An Excavation opens with the dissonant notes of a qanun string instrument and the jingling sounds of fragmented pottery. The screen flashes with images of a partially reconstructed Object 16, an ancient Apulian vase that would have been found in a tomb, and cardboard boxes with various international labels affixed with crime-scene-like polaroids of other artifacts. In 2014, 45 crates of looted antiquities were discovered in a warehouse belonging to a disgraced antiquities dealer. Three of these crates were sent to forensic archaeologists Dr Christos Tsirogiannis and Dr Vinnie Norskov for research. Since 2018, Brennan has documented these investigations, mapping the illicit antiquities network—the largest trafficking economy after drugs and weapons—from looters and smugglers to auction houses and museums. An Excavation hones in on the archeologists as they attempt to piece together the history and destruction of Object 16, while physically piecing together its remaining fragments. Both are incomplete, and the funerary object ironically will forever exist between two worlds— filled with physical and historical gaps.
I Love Ancient Baby begins with an ominous and robotic countdown. Flashing images of Mesopotamian artifacts oscillate with playing cards featuring tips to avoid destroying ancient objects and remains, issued by the US Military to educate soldiers invading Iraq. Wahid draws personal comparisons between herself and the pictured artifacts—connecting her role as an artist to those that crafted these relics, charting her parents migration from Kurdistan and the forced journey these objects have taken, and the amorphous plane of existence in which these objects, her late father, and then yet-to-be-born son seem to exist. These parallel journeys across time and space lend a sense of humanity and dignity previously taken away from these artifacts when they were violently uprooted from the context in which they were made. As the images ceaselessly flash against neon pink and psychedelic checkerboard backgrounds, an imagined conversation between the artist, her late father, and the artifacts appears on screen. As Jala details the “weird non-place you built for us,” the objects lament that they are “kept prisoner in drawers…a haunted house of horrors, jailed in make believe histories.”
Shivers plunges viewers into what artist Kent Chan refers to as a “museological horror,” a fever dream depiction of a night at the museum depot. A camera flash rhythmically pierces the darkness with just enough light to slowly reveal shelves and shelves of artifacts with tropical provenance sitting in climate-controlled storage. Shivers presents the irony of this scenario, in which the climate these objects were created in and for is deemed no longer suitable, as compared to the temperature-controlled conditions that now house them for “protection.” With each ringing flash, a stirring commotion, and a pulsing, footstep-like rhythm begins. As the lens closes in on the artifacts, figures emerge seemingly mimicking the sculptures and suggesting a hidden world where these objects come to life. The expressive choreography, set to Ugandan producer Authentically Plastic’s unsettling soundtrack, reminds viewers of the lives these objects may have lived and the stories they could tell, while making their present frigid idle state even more apparent.
Artist bio
Maeve Brennan (b. 1990, London, UK) lives and works in London, UK. Recent solo exhibitions include Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2025); VISUAL Carlow, Dublin, Ireland; Galerie für Gegenwartskunst, E-WERK Freiburg, Nürnberg, Germany (2023); Stanley Picker Gallery, London, UK (2022); Mother’s Tankstation, Dublin, Ireland (2018); Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art, Turku, Finland (2018); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz, Austria (2018); Chisenhale Gallery, London, UK (2017); Spike Island, Bristol, UK (2017); and The Whitworth, Manchester, UK (2017). She has participated in major international group exhibition and screened her films at internationally, including Truth to Nature, Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, Bristol, UK (2024); A Yellow Sun, A Green Sun, MAXXI Museum, Roma, Italy (2024); Double Feature, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany (2023); New Vision Award Competition, CPH:DOX, Copenhagen, Denmark (2023); Notes for Tomorrow, Majorie Barrick Museum of Art, Las Vegas, Nevada (2022); Open City Documentary Festival, London, UK (2022); British Art Show 9; touring across the UK (2021-2022); Sonic Acts Festival, Amsterdam, the Netherlands(2019); International Film Festival, Rotterdam, the Netherlands (2018); and FILMADRID, Madrid, Spain (2018), among others. She has been awarded prestigious awards and scholarships, including the Jarman Award (2024); CIRCA Prize (2024); the Sainsbury Scholarship at the British School of Rome (2023); the Stanley Picker Fine Art Fellow (2019–22); the Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists (2021); and the
Jerwood/FVU Award (2018). She is currently in residence at Somerset House Studios, London.
Kent Chan (b. 1984, Singapore) lives and works between the Netherlands and Singapore. He has held solo and two-person exhibitions at A.I. Gallery, London, UK (2024); Gasworks, London, UK (2023); Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen, Germany (2022); Bureaucracy Studies, Renens, Switzerland (2022); Kunstinstitut Melly, Rotterdam, the Netherlands (2021); De Appel, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2021); Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, Netherlands (2020); NUS Museum, Singapore (2019); SCCA-Ljubljana, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia (2018); Grey Projects, Singapore (2016); and The Substation, Singapore (2013). His works and films have been exhibited in major international group exhibitions and festivals including Encounters Over Several Plants, Tate Modern, London, UK (2022); Liverpool Biennial 2023, Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, UK (2023); 22nd Biennial Sesc_Videobrasil, Videobrasil, São Paulo, Brazil (2023); 12th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea (2023); International Film Festival Rotterdam 2022, Rotterdam, the Netherlands (2022); Weather Systems, Onassis Stegi, Athens, Greece (2022); One Song is Very Much Like Another, and the Boat is Always from Afar, Times Museum, Guangzhou, China (2021); Bienalsur 2021, Bienalsur, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2021); and The Ahistoric Vacuum, EYE Film Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2016). He is the 2023 winner of the Paulo Cunha e Silva Award and Impart Art Prize, and 2021 winner of Foundwork Artist Prize. His works are collected by the Kadist Foundation, Paris, France & San Francisco, USA; the Rijkscollectie, Netherlands; Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, Netherlands; and Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, Germany.
Jala Wahid (b. 1988, London, UK) lives and works in London, UK. She has held solo exhibitions international institutions including Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen, Germany (2023); Kunstverein Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany (2023); Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK (2023); Tramway, Glasgow, Scotland (2023); Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (2018); and Serpentine Gallery, London, UK (2016). Her works and films have been exhibited in major group exhibitions and festivals including Imagining Otherwise, Primary, Nottingham, UK (2024); Phantom Sculpture, MK Gallery, Warwick, UK (2024); Ghosting, M.1 Arthur Boskamp-Stiftung, Hohenlockstedt, Germany (2023); Blink, Stavanger Art Museum, Stavanger, Norway (2023); Contested Bodies, Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, Leeds, UK (2023); Testament, Goldsmiths CCA, London, UK (2022); Mere Skyn, CAPC Museum, Bordeaux, France (2020); Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender, Resistance, Arnolfini, Bristol, UK (2019); Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender, Resistance, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, UK (2019); Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender, Resistance, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK (2018); Searching the Sky for Rain, SculptureCenter, New York, New York (2019); and Royal Academy Schools Show, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (2019). Wahid co-edited SALT. Magazine from 2012-2019. Wahid’s work is included in private and institutional collections around the world, most recently Lafayette Anticipations, Paris, France, and FRAC Grand-Large, Dunkerque, France.
Support
Lead support for High Line Art comes from Amanda and Don Mullen. Major support is provided by Shelley Fox Aarons and Philip E. Aarons, The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston, and Charina Endowment Fund.
High Line Art is supported, in part, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council, under the leadership of Speaker Adrienne Adams.
