Rose Salane’s Confessions Series

Walker Publishing Filed to Visual Arts · Part of Artistic Research?

Rose Salane, Confession 1 (detail), 2023. Butler Family Fund, 2024. © Rose Salane 2024, courtesy the artist, Carlos/Ishikawa, and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, in the context of Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters.

Originally from New York City, where she still lives and works, Rose Salane uses collections of objects as an entry point to excavates the systems of evaluation, exchange, and organization that shape urban life. Salane’s investigations demonstrate the ways in which larger bureaucratic forces order human activity and the perseverance of humanity in the face of those automated and alienating structures. Extensively researching, analyzing, and categorizing objects and information, Salane’s works often form poignant connections between the personal and globally impactful.

Sitting down with the Walker, Salane discusses her Confession series that explores the relationship between objects taken, and then returned, to archaeological park of Pompeii.

Walker Art Center

How did the Confession series come about?

Rose Salane

I started the Confession series in 2022 when I was invited to do a residency at the archaeological park of Pompeii, called Pompeii Commitment. As part of that, I was invited to look in their archive. I had been told there was a box of returned artifacts that the archive had no placement for. When I was able to look within this box, I found letters that were sent back to the archaeological park. The letters had these intimate notes that asked for the park to receive fragments that had been taken by tourists and visitors. This was so compelling.

Visitors and tourists had taken fragments of the archaeological park and held onto them for various amounts of time, and eventually they felt compelled in some regard to return them. The letters held very innocent notes: “I'm sorry for taking this, could you please return it to its respective place of origin?” I thought that showing this act within the archive of a place like Pompeii revealed a relationship to wanting to hold onto history. Wanting to somehow possess that history and have it be a part of us was so compelling.

WAC

Much of your previous work explores New York and your hometown of New York City. Was there a difference in making this work in a place like Pompeii?

RS

In Pompeii, they were constantly reminding me that this is a city that was paused on a single day. The layers and layers of volcanic ash had settled over every action happening at that moment. That is a very devastating experience, and the spectacle of being in this place is also quite curious and devastating.

My previous work included projects that have a similar devastation in New York City, but, this time, I was interested in the distance from that devastation. With Pompeii, we are about 2,000 years away from that devastation, and we’re still able to observe this place.

[In Pompeii] you can observe this frozen daily life that was happening in the same way that it happens today in places like New York City. There are mixed-use buildings with food stands at the base and apartments at the top. It seemed so incredibly contemporary. The city also had a lot of different sections, hierarchies. So many contemporary aspects of Pompeii were very subtle and could go by unnoticed if I hadn’t gone there in person.

WAC

Did you have criteria for selecting the letters and fragments that you ended up using?

RS

What interested me most was the diversity of places that the letters were coming from. For example, the letter in Confession 1 just says: “I’m sorry, please return this to the pompei cavi” and is from Japan. The packaging was very beautifully put together, and I thought where these fragments were being sent back from also reflected the differences in tourists and the different outlooks on apologies.

With Confession 2, the letter says: ”To whom it they concern, please accept this tin of ashes and hopefully return them to where approximately they came from. When I was in high school, my school took a trip to Pompeii, though I was not able to go, I asked a friend to bring me back something. He brought me this small tin that contained ashes that he had scooped up from the site somewhere. I’m not sure exactly where they from. However, the school was from Nashville and the trip took place in the late 1980s. I hope this info will help you return them to their proper place. I thank you so much for doing this. I would myself, but for the pandemic. . . . Again, thank you for helping me in this situation.”

There are so many differences between the letters. For example, in Confession 1, it’s very gentle in its apology and request to please return the fragment to the Pompeii cavi. But in Confession 2, there’s a longer detailed note about [how] this woman had asked a friend in the 1980s to bring something back from Pompeii, and this friend of hers takes a handful of a volcanic ash. This wasn’t returned around the Covid-19 pandemic, because the pandemic is mentioned in the letter. That means they had the ash for around 40 years before they felt compelled to return it.

This ash is a very frequently found object, or not even object, but part of the land at this point. It is very interesting that this is an object or material that engages in a way, which makes the beholder want to return it. It has a mysticism around it that is negative and compels these visitors to return what has been taken.

WAC

Each letter’s voice is unique, such as in Confession 6: “In 2018, my family and I visited [the] archeological park. On this occasion, I thoughtlessly took part of the mosaic as a souvenir without thinking about all the suffering people who lived in this beautiful city. I apologize, that mosaic does not belong to me. I decided I had to return this piece of history to where it undoubtedly belongs. Forgive me for such reckless conduct that I thoughtlessly decided to take part of your precious history. Thank you for forgiveness.”

While Confession 12 says: “I took these stones because I was stupid and thought it was cool. Since then, I’ve had numerous personal tragedies, including the death of my daughter. This has caused me to look at the universe differently. I understand that the people of Pompeii died in awful circumstances and deserved to be left at rest. I’m truly sorry. Forgive.”

RS

Confession 12 is a really intense one. I never opened that bag because I felt, This has to stay closed.

When I was engaging with these objects in the archives, they were meticulous about keeping the pairing of the object and the letter. I wasn’t going to let that separate, but also when the container was too precarious to open, I left it.

With Confession 12, the note mentions that the holder of the fragment of the archaeological park had events take place that were very difficult, one of them the loss of his daughter, which I found very, very, very intense. The letters are also a way of perceiving time and a life experience.

This person mentions that, because of all these events, he has looked at the universe differently. That reevaluation has encouraged him to send this small bag back to the archaeological park. These gestures and impulses are very compelling and fascinating. How do these sites of great spectacle, like Pompeii, generate these feelings? How does taking these fragments reflect impulses or desires to hold onto history? Then, the fragment finds its place back into the whole again, the site from which it was initially taken.

WAC

How did you decided on the background used in the photographs?

RS

I chose the red background because I thought about Pompeii Red. It’s the strongest pigment within the archaeological park that has survived, and I think people associate Pompeii with red often.

WAC

Did the title of the series come to you immediately?

RS

No. I was thinking about a summary of what everybody’s writing. I wanted to call it “apologies,” but then it seemed like people were essentially confessing information and directing it to the park where they could restore this material. “Confessions” felt like a good title for that gesture.

Confessions is also bit religious. When I went through all these letters, there is some spiritual quality to what’s going on here. Not under any one type of religion, but it’s a spiritual act to return this sacred object or deem something sacred. It could be a little fragment of dirt or a little mosaic, but because it comes from Pompeii, it has this coating of meaning. That shared meaning is what I was interested in.

As an artist, I’m always thinking about how I’m an usher. I usher people into this section of a place or a way of seeing a place. That’s the most revealing part about what it can mean to be an artist. We reveal these truths. In this case, with Confessions, I become this usher into sections of the archive that are never revealed because they don’t have historical validity.

WAC

Is there anything you want visitors to take way from this work?

RS

What would be great for people to realize is how these objects capture movements of people within a place. I encourage viewers to see how we hold onto things that might seem so insignificant, but how they gain significance across a lifespan.▪︎

Experience Confessions for yourself in the exhibition Ways of Knowing, on view Mar 8–Sep 7, 2025. Learn more and get tickets here.

Want to dive in more? Dig into the Ways of Knowing exhibition catalog available in the Walker's Museum Shop here.