Alicja Kwade: Medium Median

Medium Median is the mesmeric new installation by Berlin-based artist Alicja Kwade, commissioned by the Whitechapel Gallery in 2016/17. Exploring our relationship with the nature of space and time, Kwade creates subtly arranged but conceptually rooted works, imbued with intellectual enquiry and discovery.

At the centre of Medium Median is a twenty-first century astrolabe: iPhones suspended as a slowly rotating mobile, each showing star charts picked up from GPS satellite while emitting a robotic reading from the Book of Genesis; this is accompanied by three giant bronze casts of fossilised bones, their biomorphic shapes echoed in a background projection of an asteroid as seen by an infrared camera.

Assembling human technology and cosmic phenomenon, it is an investigation into how we understand the universe. Bringing together the ideas behind this unique commission, this book features an illuminating conversation with Kwade about the work, as well as a detailed survey of her practice to date by curator Cameron Foote and new essays by curator Daniel F.

Herrmann and anthropologist Debbora Battaglia.