16/05/2026
New acquisition: we are thrilled that the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University has acquired Nina Katchadourian’s 2016 video “The Recarcassing Ceremony” - a beautiful homecoming for this funny, tender, and powerful work about family, loss, and creative play. Congratulations, and !
From : We’re delighted to announce our recent acquisition from of ’s video work, “The Recarcassing Ceremony” (2016). Currently, this work and others by Katchadourian are on view across the Central Pavilion and the Arsenale in the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia , “In Minor Keys.”
Raised in a multilingual family, artist Nina Katchadourian explores multiculturalism, diasporic mythology, and the tension between assimilation and cultural retention through photography, performance, installation, and video.
The Recarcassing Ceremony, filmed on the shores of southern Finland and Northern California, revisits a childhood game Katchadourian played with her brother Kai on the Finnish island of Pörtö using Playmobil figurines and elaborate family narratives.
Drawing on archival recordings, family interviews, home videos, and audio tapes, the film blends childhood imagination with the formal structure of ritual and memorial. Through this playful yet poignant reconstruction, the work reflects on loss, memory, and the fragile stories that displacement and death threaten to erase.
[Nina Katchadourian, The Recarcassing Ceremony, 2016. Single-channel video (color, sound), 24:24 min. Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Gift of Loren and Mike Gordon.]
