I Cling to Virtue: An Exhibition Review and Statement of Practice

The exhibition I Cling to Virtue took place at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, in 2010. The project was organized around the narrative, material, and visual memories of “Monarch Lövy Singh,” a character created by the artists Onkar Kular and Noam Toran in collaboration with the writer Keith R. Jones. In a museum renowned for authenticity and craftsmanship, Monarch’s “heirlooms” underscored a different aspect of the cultural: the ability of images and everyday objects to reconfigure otherwise distant histories and geographies. The review below suggests parallels with the use of objects as plot devices in cinema andthe efforts of contemporary designers to “re-enchant” the everyday experience of modernity. The statement of practice explains how ICTV queried the idea of authorship and used rapid- prototyped “diagrammatic” versions of everyday things to complicate the experience of artifact and artifice. Hence the problem of what constitutes “history” as opposed to “memory” merged with the paradox of what is true or false in representation.