Sediments of Memory, 2026

Heide Hatry’s practice centers on the transformation of books as material witnesses: objects that carry cultural memory and, at times, the marks of its alteration or loss. For this installation, she treated books as bodies that absorb and register the conditions they encounter, and reconfigured them into sculptural and archival forms.

The work responds to the transatlantic movement embedded in the Sandstone Steps project, specifically the passage of materials, labor, and knowledge between Scotland and New York. A series of 18th- and 19th-century Scottish books has been transformed through immersion in saltwater, with the Atlantic itself acting as a material agent: salt enters the structure of the page, crystallizes, and remains as residue. Through repeated exposure, the books develop mineral accretions that obstruct, seal, or partially fuse their surfaces. They shift from readable objects toward mineral forms, and from an ambivalence that reflects the transition from hopeful immigration toward committed subordination to an accepted allegiance.

The books function as a kind of displaced archive, holding not what is preserved but what is transformed, lost, or carried across.

Crystallization of 18-19th-century Scottish book
25 x 55 inches
Unique