To Be King (Installation)

To be King is informed by the essay ‘Las Meninas’ which Michel Foucault published in 1966 as the first chapter to his book The Order of Things. Foucault in his description of the painting by Velàsquez suggests (amongst other things) that it is through language, the taxonomy of the day, that things are ordered. This order, particular yet tenuous, is dependent on who is in control of the gaze, who is ‘king’.

To be King situates itself as a destabilizing narrative in which the king is ‘dethroned’. Positioning characters and spaces from the periphery in the place from which the dominant gaze originates points to the possibility of a different order of things and highlights the fragility of the established and dominant order.

This installation forms part of a critical reflection on the museum as a space. The different components are designed to communicate ideas which are associated with the display of a ‘masterpiece’ in a museum.

The installation includes video, frame, sculpture and museum guard uniform.