The Calvin Klein watch Omi gave me
The Calvin Klein watch Omi gave me
2018
Laser engraved Colombian souvenirs, screen printing, Coptic stitch binding
Artist book and book box, edition of 20, 6 1/4 x 4 1/4 inches
Constructed of pages of untreated chipboard and vellum, this coptic stitch bound book is housed in a box of untreated book board that has been laser engraved with an image of a Calvin Klein watch. The book recounts the true story of the famous Colombian novelist and poet, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who was treated for lymphatic cancer in 1999. As viewers turn through laser engraved images of Colombian souvenirs and tchotchkes, there are also pages of screen printed vellum with the same ghostly watch from the box. The text continues that various news sources took the rumors of Garcia Marquez’s failing health to be confirmed when a poem was leaked to a Peruvian newspaper that the poet had sent only to his closest friends. The world press was taken by this poem, which emphasized how the beloved poet was not ready to die - seemingly the unreserved words of a scared and dying man. However, it was confirmed later that Garcia Marquez had not written the poem. It was instead written by a Mexican ventriloquist for one of his puppets. The book ends with the full poem reproduced. How do we make sense of and attach meaning to occurrences, poems, or objects, even when we know them to be inauthentic or illusionistic? The Colombian objects were things sent to me throughout my life by my own Austrian-Colombian grandmother or Omi as I called her, and the Calvin Klein watch was the last object Omi ever sent me before passing away in 2018.