Rongorongo is glyph-based form or writing or proto-writing discovered on Easter Island. Attempts have been made to decipher it, though none have been successful. In her Rongorongo series, Columbia-born Gala Porras-Kim pairs drawings of this unknowable language with drawings of objects from Easter Island, creating a system of knowledge where the text appears to attribute meaning to the object. Yet, since no meaning can be gleaned from the connection of the two elements, the work has more to say about how institutions depend on pairing the two systems (artwork/artifact and text), and how humans communicate in multiple ways, often simultaneously. Porras-Kim’s work is in the public collections of LACMA; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Whitney Museum, New York; and FRAC Pays de la Loire, Carquefou.
