Damien Hirst’s Gold Cat from Egypt was created for the artist’s monumental exhibition Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable at Palazzo Grassi and Punta Della Dogana during the 2017 Venice Biennale. The widely discussed exhibition was a triumph for its unprecedented immersive concept, a fiction devised by Hirst revolving around an invented 2008 discovery of a colossal maritime wreckage off the coast of East Africa. Hirst’s ambitious project asked viewers to suspend their disbelief, immersing themselves in the Wreck of the Unbelievable. To accomplish this, Hirst created a lavish trove, claiming the works had belonged to a freed slave living at the time of the Roman Empire and had been lost with the sinking of the colossal ship, Apistos. Apistos, translated to “unbelievable” from Hirst’s “Koine Greek” lends to the exhibition’s cheeky title.
Staying faithful to the exhibition’s premise, Hirst also created a “medieval copy of an ancient manuscript,” described as “the most reliable extant account of Apistos” attributed to a sailor named Lucius Longinus. Gold Cat From Egypt is a page from this “medieval copy,” highlighting the cat as an Ancient Egyptian symbol of divine strength, fertility and justice. Opulently rendered in genuine vellum and gold leaf, the materials of present work maintain truthful to the medieval premise. Gold Cat from Egypt is presented as one of the only documents recording the existence of the long-lost treasure of the Apistos, seeing Hirst mythologize the record itself as an indirect remembrance of the submerged treasure.
Positioning himself as the benefactor who supported the recovery of these objects–in the “documentary” produced in association with the series, a ‘scientist’ offhandedly describes his familiarity with Hirst as “the shark guy”–Hirst positions his role as an artist at a remove from the work. Fanciful and unexpected, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable sees Hirst continue his longstanding exploration of life, loss, longevity, preservation, and memory in yet another innovative form.