Jessica Stockholder: Stuff Matters

“Stuff matters. It is vital. Paying attention to stuff is Jessica Stockholder’s speciality. This can mean rescuing certain things from the dump, buying others, borrowing what cannot be bought, repurposing what could be used differently. Rarely, however, has she made stuff from raw materials (transformed a tree into a table, for example). In a time when more stuff is being produced than ever before in the history of our planet—so much so that giant garbage patches float in the oceans, endangering ancient life—slowing down to attend stuff, to multiply the use of things, requires a sense of play.” —Monika Szewczy Published in 2019 on the occasion of Jessica Stockholder’s exhibition Stuff Matters at the Centraal Museum Utrecht, the catalogue features American-Canadian artist’s latest work. For her new all-embracing installation, Stockholder picked a series of pieces from the Museum’s collection and mixed them with her own works, exploring how the meaning of things can shift depending on co