Gates of Troy is a performance and photographic work by Rosemarie Castoro in which a roll of thin aluminum sheeting is unraveled through an urban street. Drawing on Greek myth, the action echoes the parading of Hector’s corpse, with the unfurling metal standing in for a wounded body subjected to violence and exposure. As the aluminum twists, folds, and drags along the ground, it takes on a visceral, corporeal quality – suggesting skin marked by scars and sutures.

The work was realized for Street Works V on December 21, 1969, and survives primarily through photographic documentation. Street photographs capture the material’s undulating forms as they register the city’s surface, while studio images show Castoro physically engaging with the aluminum or presenting it in various stages of unraveling as a sculptural object. Across performance, process, and image, Gates of Troy collapses distinctions between body and material, using industrial metal to explore myth, embodiment, and vulnerability within post-Minimal and Conceptual art.

_
Based on information provided by the Artforum website and MACBA website.