BARTON, Nancy

Photograph and collage

37 x 27"

The title of this work comes from the expression “Fort/da” which refers to the game Freud observed his eighteen-month old grandson playing. The child would repeatedly throw objects while saying “fort” (gone) and upon finding them say “da” (there). In this game, according to Freud, the child was staging and restaging the disappearance of his mother and this, in turn, was akin to processing a traumatic event. In Fort da Souvenir #3 Barton uses this work as a means of similarly processing the traumatic death of her brother Bruce Barton.

1996

BARTON, Nancy

United States, b. 1957

Gift of Laurence A. Rickels

2011.004.004