Baalback Postcards

Commissioned by BeMa for the Unfolding Landscapes exhibition, this work reuses postcards of the Baalback Roman ruins photographed by the French in the 1930s. The postcards have circulated widely as images of heritage and nationalism. For one drawing, I sanded the surface of the postcard before translating it into pencil, eroding detail and surface clarity. For the second, I sanded and burned the edges before drawing, altering the image’s perimeter and stability. Both works treat the postcard as a material object subject to wear, damage, and repetition, allowing the image to register its own conditions of circulation and degradation.