A Residency & Installation

Giving new life to old things, Randi Malkin Steinberger provides a window into the lives of the forgotten through a vast collection of found photographs, slides, and tintypes that she has gathered over years of trolling flea markets, eBay, and other sources. Salvaging and protecting these abandoned objects, Steinberger honors the memories embedded within them.

While this treasure trove of found images offers glimpses into the lives and loves of others, Steinberger’s interventions transform the photographs into objects of wonder and mystery. Embellishing these once-forgotten pictures with thread, nail polish, and Rorschach blots, the artist prompts viewers to imagine the stories they hold while acknowledging the stories we bring to them.

Just as Steinberger preserves the memories of other people, she also documents her own life in notebooks and drawings and in text and video. Part of an examined life, her practice is a search for meaning and beauty in the quotidian acts of living and making.

At MASS MoCA, Steinberger will set up a studio in Building 8, creating an ever-evolving environment that functions as work space, archive, installation, and cabinet of curiosities. The artist invites the public in to witness the daily practice of making and to consider the questions, connections, and possibilities it creates.