As a digital extension of their first US solo exhibition opening at Friedman Benda, OrtaMiklos collaborated with digital artist Janis Melderis, composer Amédée De Murcia, and writer Richard Johnston Jones to realize a virtual occupation of the Temple of Dendur, the ancient monument that now sits in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Taking this currently unvisitable site as a stage of imaginative operation, OrtaMiklos and their team have created an arresting video, combining animation and performance, which confronts the alienating experience of the current pandemic. Ricocheting through the disturbing psychological terrain of the present, they also riff on the past – Pop Art and radical design practice – while giving some indication of their own future travel.

The project is set (virtually) within the Temple of Dendur, the famous – and famously displaced – Egyptian holy site that anchors the ancient collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Created at the behest of the Roman Emperor Augustus and dedicated to the goddess Isis, the temple was the result of cross-cultural movement even from its beginning. Its removal to the USA in 1965 is a fascinating episode in geopolitical history. And today, it could be seen as an emblem of sequestered culture. Though it can be seen by the public through the glass exterior of the Met’s Sackler Wing, it cannot be visited due to the Covid-19 crisis. OrtaMiklos responds obliquely but powerfully to all of these layered chapters of the site’s history, viewing it as a quintessential example of contested and mediated space.

Please access the digital space: https://www.templeofconfinement.com/