The installation is modeled on “a cabin meets a geode,” the artist says. JONATHAN VANDERWEIT
Edgar Arceneaux’s Library of Black Lies, a small labyrinth entered and exited through one cramped doorway in the lower level of the Henry Art Gallery, is modeled on “a cabin meets a geode,” as the artist described it.
Billed as an architectural installation, Library of Black Lies functions more as a theater set piece in which to enact your own personal psychodrama about the contents contained inside. It feels more like a ship bilge dredged up from the ocean of our collective unconscious, heavy with cultural booty. As with much of the Los Angeles artist’s work, the piece untangles knots of hidden histories, nods at philosophical discourse, and examines cultural representation.