From Margin to Margin (Looking for Eileen) is an artist book that is primarily a collection of correspondences between the artist and parties concerned with the legacy of Eileen Gray: these include an architect, a translator, a museum curator, a cultural diplomat and Gray herself. A commissioned conversation, the book primarily creates and reflects on a series of documents about and what it may mean to carry on, revise or deny the work of a non-heroic, possibly feminist Modernism, especially one that resists visuality or seems intent to disappear, as in Gray’s particular case. The book traces the artist’s repeated frustrated efforts in this work that include an attempt to photograph her house from the sea in front of it where Le Corbusier died; an attempt to secure permission to film at the (recently) iconic villa that is currently under restoration; and eventually an attempt to reinstate Gray’s currently unmarked grave in Paris, which has led to confusion about where her ashes are actually currently located.
The book can be purchased online.
