Anya Gallaccio

This book presents Anya Gallaccio's exquisitely conceived installation at Mass MoCA which combines art, literature, history, and nature. Drawing on MASS MoCA's unique history as a textile mill where indigo dye was manufactured and where Herman Melville owned a nearby farm, artist Anya Gallaccio has created an installation that ties together these and other themes and which takes up the entirety of the museum's enormous main gallery. This book documents every step of the installation's evolution. The gallery is filled with rolling thick slabs of white felt which are saturated with indigo dye turning the whiteness into dark blue over the course of 10 months. Gallaccio's creation explores the malleability and spatial qualities of natural materials while it asks the question of how we comprehend something so big that it is beyond our physical grasp. In addition to photographs and drawings of the exhibition's creation and installation, this volume features a conversation between Gallaccio and material scientist Rachel Rivenc, essays on Moby Dick by Nathan Philbrick and the history of indigo by Rowland Ricketts, and an excerpt from Bluets, poet Maggie Nelson's meditation on the color blue.