Sympathetic Objects

This installation begins with the idea of sympathetic magic: the belief that objects and images can act upon the world through resemblance, contact, or association. Across cultures and histories, things have been understood to carry traces of the people, places, and experiences they encounter. The objects gathered here hold memory, grief, joy, faith, desire, labor, and loss. Some serve as relics, talismans, witnesses, or stand-ins for what is absent. Others have acquired meaning through touch, repetition, care, or preservation. If early cabinets of curiosity sought to gather the world, Sympathetic Objects asks how the world gathers within objects and how those objects, in turn, act upon us.

Exhibition organized by Christina Kreps and Geoffrey Shamos with participation from the students in “Collecting and Curating Across Art and Anthropology” (Winter Quarter 2026)

Contributors with objects featured in this installation: