This multi-part exhibit highlights several of the Museum’s spaces, combining elements of sculpture, textile art, video art, and photography to weave together themes of materials, bodies, histories, and spaces.

Through her residency, Agassi explored the rich history of the Home and the family that once lived here. The residence was once home to Eleanor Robinson Countiss, an heiress of the Diamond Match Company. As a wedding gift from her father J.K Robinson, Eleanor designed the mansion after Le Petit Trianon of France, Marie Antoinette’s abode on Versailles. Agassi’s pieces explore the original bedrooms, children’s playroom, breakfast nook, salon, library, and living quarters of the mansion which now houses the International Museum of Surgical Science with exhibits themed on the history of medicine. Agassi shines a light on the history of the matriarch of the Countiss home while also bringing into the fold medical history and education through medical texts and surgical themes.

“In the past five years I have developed a strategy that I call “biography of the site” in which I develop a personal relationship with the past, present, and future history of a place in connection to my own. With this methodology, I “sculpt” the site as a material, and create a project from the specificity of place and the institution’s impact. I take inspiration from the experience of spending physical time on-site, researching the collection and archives, and developing relationships with the institution’s staff.

I’m fascinated by the history of the institution and its transformation from a private house to an exhibition space. With both large-scale and intimate works, I challenge the home/architecture opposition that has worked so hard for so long to gender our understanding of the relations between architecture (conceptualized as masculine) and home (conceptualized as feminine). In my work, it is apparent that gender is inscribed in space and that space is never designed in a gender-neutral way. I hope to re-domesticate the public space of the museum which has been transformed from what was once private and intimate.”

In this site-specific body of work, Agassi echos traditional, domestic female crafts–handiwork, embroidery, sewing, knitting–her use of these tools is not conventional, certainly not functional, and it acquires a different resonance that stems from the disillusioned awareness of the moment of choice. Simultaneously small-scale and monumental, the elements of emphasis, radicalization, and deviation are an integral part of the conceptual tactics underlying in the work. Insomnia demands attention, through either intimate viewing of minute details, or the dominating of the exhibition spaces in situ.

Nelly Agassi's work can be found throughout the Museum on the second, third and fourth floors: a large-scale installation is located in the Hall of Immortals with several smaller items to be found in the Library, main hallway, and Opthamology Gallery; small items can be found on the third floor in the Medical Imaging exhibit and Obstetrics exhibit, and a video installation is located in the fourth floor screening room.

The video exhibit features the work of Kotoka Suzuki (sound) and Alexandra Yasinovsky (videography).