Found Burnt Text

2012
Burnt adhesive

Installation view, Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne

This work was initially realised as part of Jitish Kallat’s solo exhibition at the Ian Potter Museum in Melbourne in 2012. Here the artist gives form to a piece of found text by handwriting it onto a wall using adhesive and burning it, leaving a barely legible imprint of letters obscured by patches of soot. Rendered as a delicate charred impression, the work evokes the inferno at the centre of the paradox it inscribes.

The text in question describes a causal loop that conflates the present, the past, and the future:

A man travels back in time to discover the cause of famous fire. While in the building where the fire started he accidentally knocks over a kerosene lantern and causes a fire, the same fire that would inspire him years later to travel back in time.