reviews

  • Dayanita Singh, The Gift NFS, 2005/2016, vitrine displaying accordion-fold photobook Chairs, 2005, 7 1/8 × 91 × 4 1/2". From “Given Time: The Gift and Its Offerings.”

    Dayanita Singh, The Gift NFS, 2005/2016, vitrine displaying accordion-fold photobook Chairs, 2005, 7 1/8 × 91 × 4 1/2". From “Given Time: The Gift and Its Offerings.”

    “Given Time”

    Gallery Odyssey

    Few philosophers incite muddled cultural takes like Jacques Derrida. “Given Time: The Gift and Its Offerings,” curated by Arshiya Lokhandwala, is titled after Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money (1991), Derrida’s deconstruction of Marcel Mauss’s classic sociological treatise on reciprocity and exchange, The Gift (1925). Basing his argument on a cyclical retelling of Charles Baudelaire’s “Counterfeit Money,” a parable about a man who gives a beggar a high-value coin that turns out to be counterfeit, Derrida develops the notion of the impossibility of a genuinely altruistic gift, concluding that such

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