Sidewalk Kintsukuroi (Akron Art Museum)

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For this installation, Rachel Sussman drew inspiration from the Japanese tradition of kintsukuroi, in which broken ceramics are mended with gold. Rather than hiding repairs, kintsukuroi honors damage as part of an object’s history. Sussman thus “fixed” cracks in the museum’s concrete floor with a mixture of bronze, gold dust, and resin. She also considered a scientific theory that much of the Earth’s gold was deposited by a tremendous meteor shower that took place billions of years ago. For the artist, highlighting flaws in the floor relates to this long geological time: “it serves as a reminder that natural processes are happening all around us, but at a pace that is far too slow for us to observe with the naked eye.”

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