The Rosetta Stone

30 x 19 x 14 in
Mixed media: table leg, wood crate, metal grate, cutting board, marble, plastic arm, stone, shell, metal square w/embossed sun, text.
2006

The way we were treated as small children is the way we treat ourselves the rest of our lives: with cruelty or with tenderness and protection. We often impose our most agonizing suffering upon ourselves and, later, on our children and for some, on the world.
— Alice Miller

The Rosetta Stone, is a key to these concepts. The “stone”, a burnt and scarred cutting board, sits in a crate covered with a rusty oven grill. Mounted on top are a a metal symbol of the sun. The text of the poem is written in a child’s handwriting.

The words “myself” and “the world” are written on moveable scrabble pieces on the backs of which are respectively the letters “i” and “u”. These words are interchangeable not only because some of us destroy ourselves and some of us destroy others, but because “myself” and “the world” are ultimately one.


(Text)


from where I came
no one could tell
the things I’d do
when I grew up
blood anger
hate death
turning myself inside out
to cleanse the world of pain
sun sea earth stone
I was too long left alone


© 2006 Rosa Naparstek. All Rights Reserved.


Appearing in “Innerscapes and Landscapes” exhibition, Hebrew Tabernacle Congregation. New York, NY. November 2021.

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