My Project—LLhuros

Editor’s note: This writing is thought to have been part of a 1988 draft for a grant application or exhibition inquiry for “Llhuros II.” It was transcribed from Norman Daly’s hand-written notes on yellow-lined paper and lightly edited, with addition of new images of objects.

My earlier project, The Civilization of Llhuros, is the first multi-media of its genre in archaeological fiction. (I was a speaker this past month in Houston at the 1988 Art College Association where the subject in this field was “Artists’ Visions of Imaginary Cultures”.)

The project is comprised of more than 150 works of visual art, ranging from a match-box size pseudo-scientific instrument to an eight by thirty-seven-foot temple wall in bas-relief. Besides painting, sculpture, mosaics and frescoes, there are architectural ruins, scale models of temples, poetry, prayers, liturgical music, maps, costumes, jewelry, votives, fetishes, civic and sacred (sepulchral) steles, pictograph, facsimiles and replicas.

A recorded enactment of a religious festival—“The Tokens of Holmeek”—simulates an orgiastic procession moving from the sea to a hill-top. It employs natural sounds (wind, rain, surf, birds) together with incidental life sounds—dialogue in Llhuroscian, bird cries and children’s and women’s choruses.

“Llhuros” is an original work of fiction presented as a “real” ancient culture with an invitation to the viewer to share with me common appraisals of some human experiences.

Separate from this auditory background, is a twenty-five-minute sound track of an interview of two Llhuroscian scholars by a science editor. Purportedly recorded ‘in situ’, at the excavation site of the Temple of Atraxos, the tape features an interview with an English paleographer and a Swedish archaeologist. The scholars present readings and sometimes opposing interpretations of various aspects of the Llhuroscian culture. There is also an hour-long narrated slide show of the origins, the visual art, the salient characteristics and chronological history of Llhuros.

This exhibition was shown in seven American museums in 1972-74.

In 1974, Llhuros traveled to Cologne, for the opening of the Römisch-Germanisches Museum which was taking part in city-wide art exhibitions gathered under the “Projekt ’74” umbrella. Here, Llhuros was augmented by several site-specific pieces – a new large sculpture, bas-relief, a mosaic, and stained-glass. The original catalog was translated into German.

With Llhuros, I attempt to go beyond the boundaries of a conventional exhibition of painting and sculpture in various ways. I parody the analytical methods of anthropologists, sociologist, psychiatrists and art historians. I challenge the reliability of the viewer’s own senses by creating ambiguity, by using real stone, marble and metal along with carefully patinated Styrofoam, plastic and found objects to suggest an ancient origin. I emphasize deception, obscurities and satire.

A set of seven new objects were later shown in Rotterdam in 1984 as a part of the “Imaginair Landen” exhibition at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

All these strategies are aimed at stimulating audience involvement. I pursue this mode of presentation because I am opposed to exhibiting in a passive environment contrived to eliminate interferences and to foster servile acquiescence. The way I present this project leads to opposite goals where a sense of beauty is heightened and lowered by alternately strengthening and weakening the credibility of this civilization.

“I pursue this mode of presentation because I am opposed to exhibiting in a passive environment contrived to eliminate interferences and to foster servile acquiescence.”

Thus, in an initial presentation of apparently reasonable and sound information, works of logically varied scale and purpose, a feeling of congruity of style and ancient appearance are dispelled by uncovering a disguise—[the metal pair of fornicating gods – COL.7 – is actually an old-fashioned stove-lid handle and a flag-holder— or the heavily encrusted earthenware – COL. 69 a sacred oil-container–is really a plastic detergent bottle.] Among the original Llhuroscian pieces are both copies and facsimiles. In relation to the small-scale models, the huge fragments give a notion of awesome size to the full-scale original entity. Chattering human voices interweave with electronically-generated sounds.

These provocations, denials and even frustrations are used as activating forces which would urge, if not goad, the viewer to wonder, question, consider and perhaps decide that there is a disconcerting similarity between the foibles, fears, absurdities, eccentricities and pervasive eroticism of this imaginary culture and our own society.

The original document can be found in the Norman Daly Papers at the Cornell University Archives.

©1988-2026 Norman Daly Art