Rose Salane’s work acknowledges the individual lives that inhabit larger social, economic, cultural, and political structures, and seeks to uncover the intimate and personal stories often lost in the grand historical narrative.
This project examines a collection of 94 rings that were lost then found throughout the New York City Subway system in 2016. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority stored each ring for one year in the hope that they would be reclaimed by their respective owners. The rings were documented by colour and material before being archived with a detailed description and unique number for the MTA’s records. Salane acquired the lot and has since been working with a biology lab to extract potential traces of mitochondrial DNA left behind on each ring, an intuitive reader to search for any spiritual information imbued within these objects, and a pawnshop to appraise their material values. Presented with this assortment of collected insights, we are asked to consider parallel notions of value and truth as we recall the lineages of the individual in a public environment, the individual within the city, and the individual within a global population.
