Process Views: Untethered/Retethered at NMAfA, installation-stage projection
- Jun 10
- 2 min read
Untethered/Retethered: installation-stage documentation
This post brings together video documentation and still images from the installation-stage presentation of Untethered/Retethered at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, recorded during the installation of Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art in 2025, before the exhibition opened to the public in 2026.
The first video documents an installation-stage projection version of the work. This version was one of three projection versions I developed and made available to the museum during the installation process. It combines imagery of landscapes in Iraq and Afghanistan, a nighttime firefight, and Horatio Greenough’s George Washington, 1840, a sculpture in the Smithsonian American Art Museum collection, on view at the National Museum of American History. Greenough’s sculpture, sometimes referred to as Enthroned Washington, was based on Phidias’s Statue of Zeus at Olympia. In this projection version, the sculpture appears without Washington’s face being shown.
Following further internal review during installation, the museum and I agreed to use the landscape-only version now on view in the exhibition.
The second video clip gives a wider view of the installation in space, showing the suspended harness and the physical relationship between the projected image, the parachute material, and the surrounding gallery.
