In Defense of Extraction

This cuirass is made up of, and covered with, images of ore from a 1960’s children’s book of minerals from around the world. I extracted the minerals from the book just as they might be extracted from the earth, thereby rendering the book useless, and heightened the “value” of each specimen by investing additional labor in by giving each one dimension. The idea that mineral wealth might protect us is undermined by the inherent fragility of this object; there is no such thing as protection from the human habit of extraction.