The Transitive Property of Equality (2015)

Sonya Rapoport, The Transitive Property of Equality, with Anne Lesley Selcer, 2015. Installation view at Krowswork, Oakland. Collages on pages from The New York Times, Objects On My Dresser objects, shelves.

This 26-part collage and interactive installation represents the 12th phase of Rapoport’s Objects on My Dresser series, which originated in 1979. Short phrases from fellow resident Anne Lesley Selcer’s poem The natural world frozen (2014) are collaged onto selected pages from The New York Times and matched with one of the domestic objects that were the subject of Rapoport’s most ambitious and longest-running conceptual computer artworks. 

Sonya Rapoport, The Transitive Property of Equality – installation at Krowswork, Oakland, 2015. Collages on New York Times pages, Objects on My Dresser objects, shelves.

Viewers were asked to participate in the installation by selecting an object and matching it with a quote from Selcer’s poem and a page from The New York Times. They recorded their choice by placing a colored glass bead in a grid.

Sonya Rapoport, The Transitive Property of Equality, 2015. Collage on New York Times pages with poem The natural world frozen by Anne Lesley Selcer.

Completed in the final weeks of Rapoport’s life, and assembled according to her instructions, this meditation on artmaking embodies Rapoport’s generous humor, unflinching critical eye, and fascination with categorization and matching.

Transitive Property of Equality Videos

Art Historians Terri Cohn and Alla Efimova host a video series exploring artist Sonya Rapoport’s magnum opus, Objects On My Dresser (1979-1983 & 2015).

In this first episode, which focuses on the 2015 installation The Transitive Property of Equality, they interview poet and art writer Anne Lesley Selcer and Farley Gwazda, director of the Sonya Rapoport Legacy Trust.

Additional documentation from Krowswork:

Video of poet Anne Lesley Selcer discussing her work with Krowswork gallerist Jasmine Moorhead, 2015.