Remember Wounded Knee - Laurent Olivier

As part of the Ineligible project, French archaeologist Laurent Olivier made Remember Wounded Knee (bone, glass, plastic, fabric, textile, vegetal debris). Harnessing the shock that results from recitation and revision of violent and brutal events, Olivier brings to life invisible victims of the American genocide against the native peoples of North America. Breathing life into the disarticulated materials he received as a contributor to the Ineligible Project, Olivier erected butchered animal bones as if they were the standing ghosts of individuals, once slain, but newly risen from the dead (giving them an agency they had never been granted). Olivier arranged these now towering spirits of another world into positions of power, confrontation, and opposition to soldiers of America’s past, here diluted to the size, shape, and impotence of plastic, children’s toys. Substantially more than a revisionist history lesson, Remember Wounded Knee seduces the viewer to face a continuing history of racism, sorrow, and distress that the United States maintains into the 21st century. Sharp and deep, the work cuts into the painful, diseased tissue of American hubris and hypocrisy, bringing to view both a grand sadness, and a forceful reminder of the terror that any country can bring to its natural inhabitants.

Laurent Olivier is Curator in Chief of the Department of Celtic and Gallic Archaeology at the French National Museum of Archaeology in Saint-Germain-en-Laye and is the author of several classic texts including the following:

Olivier, L. 2015. The Dark Abyss of Time: Archaeology and Memory. Lanham, MD.: Rowman and Littlefield.

Remember Wounded Knee was installed as part of Ineligible’s 2020 exhibition at the International Museum of Contemporary Sculpture in Santo Tirso, Portugal that was one part of the Creative (un)makings: Disruptions in Art/archaeology show co-curated by Doug Bailey and Sara Navarro. For more information about Creative (un)makings, follow these links:

Museum exhibition description

Portuguese TV spot about opening of Ineligible

Other Featured Work from Ineligible that have been featured on artarchaeologies include the following:

Omission Sterile Landscape (Diego Costa)

Decadence (Jéssica Burrinha)

Door Knob (hand held) (Ilana Crispi)

L OST and FOOUND (Shaun Caton)

José Pedro’s Toolbox (Rui Gomes Coelho)

The catalogue from the Creative (un)makings: Disruptions in Art/Archaeology exhibition in which Ineligible was installed is available as a free pdf download through the following link:

Bailey, D.W., Navarro, S. and Moreira, A. 2020. Creative (un)makings: Disruptions in Art/Archaeology. Santo Tirso: International Museum of Contemporary Sculpture.

One part of the Creative (un)makings exhibition was a conference addressing the issues of the installation. Free pdfs are available of the conference book through the following link:

Bailey, D.W., Navarro, S. and Moreira. A (eds). 2020. Art/Archaeology: Beyond the Archaeology of Art. Santo Tirso: International Museum of Contemporary Sculpture.

If you are interested in participating in the Ineligible Project and using disarticulated (former) archaeological materials to create original work that has disruptive social and political impact, then email dwbailey@sfsu.edu with the subject line Ineligible Contributor Request.