[Audio Guide]
It looks as if grains of rice are clustering around the pure white marble, or maybe spilling out from it. Alongside the heavy slab of marble, the pile of rice looks as if it would collapse at the slightest push. The marble form resembles a house, as the title of the work suggests, but it is also reminiscent of a Christian reliquary or an Islamic tomb. The artist, Laib, describes death as a release from the body, and as transformation into an entirely different form. In this light the house, which looks like a boat floating on waves turned upside down, may with its combination of marble and rice convey combination of inorganic and organic matter, the beginning and end of life, home and voyages into the distance, oscillating back and forth between this world and the next. The works of Laib, who studied medicine before turning to art, quietly remind us that we humans live in relation to other lives, and at the same time are destined for death.
