An Usher in the Archive: Rose Salane on her Series Confession

Despite officials’ stringent exhortations to the contrary, no small number of visitors to Pompeii remove bits and pieces of the archaeological site each year. A much smaller subset of these minor thieves, however, ultimately returns their purloined treasures. But, as artist Rose Salane discovered during a 2022 residency at the site, the park can’t exactly restore these items to their undocumented sites of origin. Instead, the objects and their accompanying letters end up in a little-visited corner of the archive.

For Salane, however, such seemingly inconsequential detritus unexpectedly reveals aspects of place manifest through memory and even guilt. Her photographs of the letters and returned items invite us to consider how everyday gestures and peripheral objects can accumulate poignant significance.