Materialities invites artists to select a specific material from the Driehaus Museum to engage in a new materialist dialogue with it. In conversation with guest curator Dr. Giovanni Aloi, the artists research the histories of their chosen material to produce an engaged, critically aware, integrated response designed to uncover hidden cultural, historical, and ecological networks that bind the very fabric of the house to distant shores, peoples, skill sets, traditions, ideologies, and economic forces.
Konstellation
The ornate ceilings of the Nickerson’s Mansion are a firmament of early modern electrical wonder. In one of the bedrooms, which belonged to Roland—Samuel and Matilda Nickerson’s son—we find traces of a pivotal point in the technological evolution from gas to electrical domestic illumination in the history of Chicago. Around the room, the circular metal wall caps that belonged to the old gas lamps are still in place. It was the home’s second owner, Lucius Fisher, who installed Edison bulbs across the first and second floors towards the end of the 1880s. This historic innovation was remarked upon by guests and local newspapers as a sophisticated mark of distinction. Konstellation visualizes the unique configurations of the Nickerson’s Mansion electrical starry vaults into a three-dimensional model that evidences the poetic and material connections that subtly and indissolubly bind our domestic filament bulbs to distant astral bodies.
Konstellation, Luftwerk 2025
17 Edison light bulbs, dimmer control program