Tabernacle 2019
Steel, red cedar, American cypress, pine, makore veneer, canvas, printed cotton fabric, glass, stainless steel
74 × 90 × 96 inches; 188 × 229 × 244 cm
“Interior space is often the secret space of sculpture… I think of interior space as a world with enormous conceptual potential.”
—Martin Puryear, 2007
The shape of Tabernacle is based on a cap worn by soldiers in the Civil War. The sculpture’s elemental form is a steel lattice from which Puryear has suspended cotton textiles: black canvas and an early-nineteenth-century floral fabric draped underneath. Through openings in the textiles one can see its interior, which houses a Civil War siege mortar that Puryear constructed from wood, its barrel holding a polished stainless-steel cannonball. “Tabernacle contains a world within a world,” Brooke Kamin Rapaport has observed, adding, “A tabernacle is a place of worship, whether large enough to house a congregation or intended to hold a single icon.” As she points out, “Tabernacle is Puryear’s meditation on American gun violence.”
![<p><em>Tabernacle</em> in progress at the<br />artist’s studio, 2018</p>](https://mmg.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/online/puryear-45846-tabernacle/_1200xAUTO_crop_center-center_none/Puryear_Tabernacle_process-2.jpg)
Tabernacle in progress at the
artist’s studio, 2018
![<p>Soldiers in the 4th US Colored Infantry at Fort Lincoln, Washington, DC, c. 1863</p>](https://mmg.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/online/puryear-45846-tabernacle/_1200xAUTO_crop_center-center_none/oNi0-qHFmn2T1kzVfWyHs9EXoTu_ip_aPBVrHDwVaxw.jpg)
Soldiers in the 4th US Colored Infantry at Fort Lincoln, Washington, DC, c. 1863
![<p>Mortar cannon outside Petersburg, VA, 1864</p>](https://mmg.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/online/puryear-45846-tabernacle/_1200xAUTO_crop_center-center_none/13_inch_mortar_Dictator_in_front_of_Petersburg_Va.jpg)
Mortar cannon outside Petersburg, VA, 1864
![<p><em>Tabernacle</em> and <em>Aso Oke</em> in the US Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 2019</p>](https://mmg.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/online/puryear-45846-tabernacle/_1200xAUTO_crop_center-center_none/Photo-Joshua_White-jwpictures.com-4692.jpg)
Tabernacle and Aso Oke in the US Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 2019