I Cling to Virtue is an artwork that assembles a (fictional) archive of the Lövy Singh clan, a twentieth-century East London family of Punjabi and Lithuanian descent. Constructed from the standpoint of Monarch Lovy Singh, this collection of stories, objects and video works at the border of artifact and artifice, document and fantasy, history and myth in order to complicate the effort at ever fully, or even adequately, archiving one’s past. Because forgetting is a kind of remembrance and remembrance a kind of forgetting, the narratives that Monarch tells and the objects that he chooses to collect are not intended to capture a singular truth of his family, nor do they seek to produce a complete picture of the century through which he and his family lived. Rather, his memory attempts to curate a series of emblematic impressions.

Originally commissioned and exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London
In collaboration with Onkar Kular and Keith R. Jones. Films produced with Arvid Niklasson and Per Tingleff
A catalogue designed by Åbäke accompanies the exhibition


Images of installation at the V & A, London, September 2010, photographed by David Spero













Objects (selection taken from an edition of 26 individual pieces), photographed by Diego Trujillo


Trout



7”



Bar Mitzvah Cake



Manila Envelope



Longshoreman’s Hooks



Tricycle



Dentures



Toffee Hammer and Force Feeding Tube



Lego Farm


Clips from video works