
Cornelia Parker
Cornelia Parker makes art about gravity: how to elude it, how we cannot. In many of the installations, sculptures, and films surveyed here, the English artist emphasizes a fragmented, paralyzed sense of history by fixing objects in midair. In Thirty Pieces of Silver, 1988–89, dozens of circles made of cutlery flattened by a steamroller hang from wires attached to the ceiling so that they appear to levitate above the gallery floor: poignant leftovers of the British Empire. (The pre-steamrolled silverware makes an appearance through a depiction in a tapestry weave.) The work’s title—the infamous