Art history has been written thanks to what millenias have bequeathed us. Museum storerooms are overflowing with artifacts, objects and artworks that have survived uncertainties, turbulences and tragedies. What about the ones that have failed to present themselves to our contemporary eyes? Whether stolen and never found back, lost over the centuries, vandalised out of misunderstanding, or even destroyed by a natural disasters, every missing work is significant about our own construction of History.
Numerous researchers and scholars have looked into these loss, always through the prism of a specific lens, such as revolutionary iconoclastic periods, destruction linked to colonization, or even vandalism of contemporary art. Those researches has unfortunately little opportunity to meet, confront and nourish each other, which is why we have imagined Oblivion Collection.
Oblivion Collection is an online archive project that attempts to sketch a history of art through what millenias have removed from our eyes. If the adages teaches us that history is written bu the victorious, Oblivion Collection offers the losers, the invisibles, the disappeared, the chance to exist in a new form, and to write an history of their own. Any attempt to write History is, by definition, incomplete, that’s why it is essential for this project to be collective and participatory, in order to multiply as many points of views and ways of collecting informations as possible.
Oblivion Collection has no limit. No geographical or chronological restrictions allows us to turn this collection into a vault, the ultimate location of works that are supposed to be forgotten. Gathering together this collection of missing works is a way of overcoming the taboo surrounding the loss of works of art. Every institution, artist and collection have, alas, experienced the loss of an artwork. Yet few people speak out publicly about these losses. Oblivion Collection's aim is to become the place where all these disappearances are collected and remembered.
By inviting scholars, thinkers, institutions, artists, and individuals to complete this collection, we hope to help rethinking the way we write our common narrative, and reimagining our relationship to objects and images. We are planning to publish an online database gathering more than 10 000 notices by the end of 2024. This database will be accessible online and modifiable by any and will allow visitors to rediscover many artworks thanks to the power of hyperlinks. Several events are also being organised to bring those lost artworks back to life.