At the centre of Uri Aran’s practice is a process of collecting and arranging of objects and images in order to interrogate and re-structure conventional forms of narrative and communication. Departments (2014) was commissioned by the Liverpool Biennial: four oak and mixed media sculptures act as distilled, microcosmic representations of spaces populated with plastic grapes, pizza boxes, passport photos, silkscreened websites, and other stranded ephemera. These arrangements, which are displayed on wooden work surfaces, are both universal and intensely personal in their application. 

Rather than employing narrative in the conventional sense of having a beginning, middle, and an end, Aran allows for a multiplicity of connections and stories to emerge. The installation functions with a de-rooted, errant motion whereby different routes and pathways can be made. The visual signifiers that make up the work are related to Aran’s on-going investigation into language and its functions. As he says, “the discord of meaning in language is something I’m interested in; I don’t know if it’s because English is not my mother tongue; I see a delay of meaning. I see things as mediated – almost everything is quoted.” 

It is Aran’s troubled relationship with language and communication that is embedded within the workʼs title – Departments. On the one hand, the artist creates a structure within individualized names and categories, and yet the division between each of these faculties simultaneously inhibits communication between them.  

Hans Ulrich Obrist, 2015 (translation: Virginia Dellenbaugh)