Squeaky Clean
Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler
1993, Bars of soap, soil from the geographic center of the United States, nineteenth-century wooden chest, Collection of Themistocles and Dare Michos, San Francisco, California, Tang Museum, October 1 – December 30, 2005
Hundreds of bars of white deodorant soap are stacked in an antique wooden box next to soil from the geographic center of the United States. Ericson and Ziegler viewed the geographic center of the nation—a red-pole marker in a wide prairie sixty miles north of Rapid City, South Dakota—as a symbol for the country as a whole. The soap alludes to a sanitized notion of American history and consciousness.