Image: Cathedral, 2023, collaboration with Peter Deligdisch

The Scrap Exchange is excited to announce Durham artist-educator Jason Lord as Artist-in-Residence in the Cameron Gallery.

From April 1st until July 11th, @jasonearllord will transform the gallery into the Ministry of Cardboard, an immersive, improvised, and site-responsive installation that remains open to the public as its form emerges.

Check out the Scrap website to sign up for one of his ten cardboard sculpture, design, or book workshops among many other scrappy offerings!

The Ministry of Cardboard is a site for the overhaul of flat systems. Every cardboard box arrives with a built-in map of seams and folds that dictate how it’s meant to function as a container. This is a place to examine those existing structures, modify the rules, and pull those closed worlds open. While we plot our collective liberation, we practice identifying existing structures that work for our goals, adapting those with potential, and discarding actual trash to assemble new frameworks that match our vision. We reuse what we can, and we eliminate any cardboard that's too rotten to build with.

As we look through the intended use of the material to see what else it can become, new possibilities unfold. When an individual starts cutting against the grain, the box stops being a product and starts being a different way of thinking and building—it grows into the community as a way to practice collective dreaming. The Ministry of Cardboard transforms a scrap pile into a base of operations for the construction of new worlds that we build together.

Stay up to date with Ministry hours, an open call for cardboard art, and other ways you can be involved at @theministryofcardboard