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Cardillo's art is charged with a resurrective spirit that is both respectful and nostalgic, rooted in his own uprooted life, reflected in uprooted cultures. His use of bones and seeds refer to their symbolic histories as talismans for rebirth. Although, he comes, literally, from another place, his work can also be contextualized within the archaizing tendency that has been strong in contemporary North American art since the 1970s and has become, rather curiously, a mainstay of the avant garde-which in this case looks back over its shoulder rather than scouting ahead. Or, perhaps, the view is downwards, towards the earth, since most archeologically-oriented art is as concerned with the land, the earth itself, as it is with the artifacts and ruins discovered in it. Lucy R. Lippard / Contact Zones: Travel and Archeology in the Work of Rimer Cardillo - Essays