At what point does the act of preservation tip into destruction? Human interventions that are meant to preserve can have the effect of eroding the understanding that was sought, and creating new meanings to those unfamiliar with their origins. 

Both Christina P. Day and Sam Whalen use layers of creative practice that accumulate like coats of paint in an old home. Whalen intentionally disintegrates her images, leaving us with transparent ghosts of the source materials, while Day reassembles the remnants of flooring into tributes of their former lives, and preserves sentimental fabrics in handmade vinyl encasements. Both artist’s works remain in a constant state of change, renewal, and degradation; embodying our human desire to grasp the ungraspable. Using these inverted methods, both artists arrive in the same realm, producing ethereal works that function as relics in a secondary context.

This exhibition took place at Automat Collective in Philadelphia from October 12, 2023 to December 2, 2023.