Fabricating Authenticity, first exhibited at Women and Their Work, follows the poetics and journey of the Ardabil Carpets. These twin Persian rugs were created in the sixteenth century for the shrine of Shaykh Safi al-Din Ardabili in Ardabil. They embody extraordinary craftsmanship as well as a complex history shaped by imperial intervention.By the late nineteenth century, both the shrine and the carpets had fallen into disrepair. In order to fund necessary repairs, the custodians sold the rugs to a carpet dealer, who restored one carpet using fragments from its twin, effectively producing the illusion of a singular, “complete” artifact.
The carpets were eventually acquired by London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, which held both rugs in its collection for many years but exhibited only the more pristine example as a singular, perfect object. This act of reconstruction, paired with the obscuring of its restoration history, reflects broader imperial strategies that shape how objects from the “Orient” are curated, displayed, and interpreted.
This exhibition approaches the Ardabil Carpets through their separation, focusing on the poetics of the broken pair and the narratives produced through their fragmentation. The installation translates their central medallion motif into an architectural and reflective environment.
At the center of the gallery, two large mirrors, installed as twins, echo the carpets’ iconic central pattern and rest on a low rising platform. Positioned horizontally, the mirrors invite viewers to look downward into their surfaces. In doing so, the viewer encounters their own reflection within the medallion form, evoking the ways in which spectatorship, display, and power intersect. The act of looking down becomes a quiet metaphor for the gaze of the empire and the structures of authority that shape how cultural objects are framed and understood.
The mirrors were created through a meticulous hand process. Each design was cut using an X-Acto knife and then sandblasted to produce the etched surface. Maintaining the presence of the hand was essential because it resists the perfection of mechanical reproduction and introduces subtle irregularities.
The mirrors rest on platforms divided into four sections, referencing the charbagh, a Persian garden layout structured into quadrants by pathways or water channels. Because the Ardabil Carpet itself draws from garden imagery, this architectural reference became an important extension of the work.
There are also quieter, more subtle elements embedded in the installation. A faint line runs through each mirror where the divisions of the platform align beneath it, becoming visible only through careful observation. The exhibition is intentionally layered with these small mysteries, encouraging viewers to slow down and engage more deeply with what they see.
Surrounding the central mirrors, the gallery walls are adorned with numerous small mirrors that mimic the patterned structure of the central medallion. These reflective fragments create a dispersed field of repetition, recalling the intricate geometry of the carpets while also suggesting fragmentation and multiplicity.
Together, the installation transforms the gallery into a reflective chamber where viewers are implicated within the historical and political frameworks that produced the carpets’ separation. By translating the carpets’ pattern into a constellation of mirrors, the exhibition examines how cultural artifacts are recontextualized through systems of display, revealing the subtle ways aesthetic objects participate in the construction of historical and political narratives.
