It’s Not As Easy As It May Have Seemed to Be, 2012

Mixed-media installation, fired clay figurines, wood, and found frames — variable dimensions
2012

It’s Not As Easy As It May Have Seemed to Be is a mixed-media installation consisting of a group of hand-modelled, fired clay figurines dispersed throughout the galleries of the host institution. Rather than occupying a single designated space, the work infiltrates the museum: the figures are placed on plinths, against walls, and in proximity to other artworks, where they appear to look, react, mimic, and occasionally resist. Some align themselves with the logic of the displays; others perform small acts of disobedience — nudging at plinths, turning away from vitrines, scrutinising visitors as closely as visitors scrutinise them. The installation operates as a sustained provocation from within the exhibition itself, questioning the conventions, juxtapositions, and claims to authority through which institutions frame and present art. Hovering between the comic and the unsettling, the work makes the museum’s invisible mechanisms visible.

It’s Not As Easy As It May Have Seemed to Be was first commissioned by Mathaf: the Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, for the Tea with Nefertiti exhibition curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath (2012). It was subsequently presented at l’Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris (2013); IVAM: Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Valencia (2013); and the Staatliches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst, Munich (2014).