35 Original 35 Replicates
Coffee beans from Nablus, Palestine, self-hardening clay, English and Arabic numeral labeling, collectables display case, linen
2014
In the summer of 2013, I revisited my family's ancestral hometown of Nablus. While there, I explored the Old City when I came across an old coffee-grinding machine. I snatched 35 beans and kept those beans as a souvenir.
In 35 Original 35 Replicates, I recreated another version of the coffee beans by sculpting a replica of the original bean with self-hardening clay. Both the real and fake beans are stemmed from their place of origin. I placed them in a collectables display case with a proper archive numbering system in order to distinguish between the two sets. The original Nablus coffee beans are numbered from 1 to 35 in Arabic numerals, and the replicates are in English. Since the notion of archiving is banned within the Palestinian Territories, I had a sense of urgency to archive in America instead.