Diana Puntar’s solo exhibition comprises sculptural works inspired by her research into the history of American colonial resistance and its present-day co-option by American far-right ideologies and Republican administration under Donald Trump. One of Puntar’s starting points to this series of works is the pickle stand – a serving dish that was used in 18th century America by hosts to serve guests pickled vegetables, meats and seafood. These multi-tier ceramic towers often had small platforms in the shape of seashells and were sought-after status symbols. Initially the porcelain used to make them was imported and this trade was controlled by the British. However, domestic manufacture of these and other porcelain objects started with the establishment of the American China Manufactory South Philadelphia in 1771 by Gousse Bonnin and George Anthony Morris.
The establishment of the Manufactory should be placed within the context of growing hostility to imports and the duties placed on them by the British as well as the related increasing calls for independence. The late 1760s saw the growth of a number of boycott movements aimed to try and force Britain into repealing duties as well furthering the wider cause of independence. At a town meeting in Boston in October 1767, the town’s political radicals had persuaded the attendees to adopt of a policy of non-importation and by the following year a number of towns and cities in Massachusetts and South Carolina had followed suit. As a consequence, Bonnin and Morris’s Manufactory opened to a receptive audience. In April 1768 the patriot Dr. Benjamin Rush had written to the publisher of the Pennsylvania Journal and the Weekly Advertiser: “Go on in encouraging American manufactures…[I am] not without hopes of seeing a china manufactory established in Philadelphia in the course of a few years. Yes, we will be revenged of the mother country. For my part, I am resolved to devote my head, my heart and my pen entirely to the service of America.” Rush would write another letter in 1769: “There is but one expedient left whereby we can save our sinking country, and that is by encouraging American manufactures.”
The domestic-made pickle stands symbolised taking a stand against British imperialism and the economic exploitation of American consumers through import duties. The objects had a further, hidden through the use of anti-British and pro-independence slogans carved into their surfaces. These would only be revealed as the food on the trays was consumed, appearing as visitors munched their way through various pickles. We thus might see the pickle trays a somewhat unlikely radicalized domestic pottery production. Puntar revisits this radicality through her sculptures of pickles nestling in what look like pieces of preserved wood with pickle trays emerging from their surfaces like growths on tree bark. Puntar uses wood, carved substrates, epoxies and Jesmonite to re-create a ceramic-like quality to the pickles and their trays which through their scale also have anthropomorphic qualities. Slogans and dates are carved into the sculptures, some of which refer to the anti-colonial slogans hidden on pickle tray surfaces. Others however are rooted in the present-day, and this reflects the return to thinking that originates in the American Independence movement but is being put to very different contemporary ends.
These contemporary dates and slogans that Puntar inscribes on her surfaces reference specific moments of recent events in the USA which mark the far-right’s ongoing strategy of co-opting the discourse of 18th century anti-colonial sentiment for their own radical isolationist policies. For history of course, is being repeated here both as tragedy and farce. Puntar started working on these works in the dog-days of the first Trump administration as the American far-right attempted to overturn the election results by appealing to what Trump would later describe as “peace, patriotism, respect for law and order”. Currently in Trump’s second term, tariffs are being used as a key part of American economic policy and this is being framed by the administration as a return to a properly American outlook. In this Trump is turning to a version of American history as there is a significant history of tariffs within American economic policy, but one that ignores that tariffs had become discarded and largely thought to be counterproductive since the end of World War II.
This supposed return to ‘American history’ masks a protectionism that is being used as a weapon to create global uncertainty and weaken other economies as much as it is to stimulate domestic manufacturing and drive down imports. What once were originally anti-colonial strategies have been re-fashioned by the America right in order to assert a separation from the world that has nothing to do with anti-colonialism but instead a withdrawal from the interweaving set of international co-operation, agreements and trade that was the post-war consensus of the West. It might indeed be argued that these strategies have been co-opted from an anti-imperial movement precisely in order to create a new Empire in the run-up to the 250th anniversary of American independence on 4th July 2026. Trump’s “declaration of economic independence” that marked the start of the imposition of tariffs deliberately references this history, rewinding the clock to hostility towards imports but for very different ends.
‘(H±R–A) The Pre-Actual Acorn’ is part of Puntar’s exploration of how historical objects and motifs are transformed and changed for better and for worse. She is simultaneously showing at an offsite solo exhibition organised by the Stanley Picker Gallery titled ‘Chimera (H±R-A) An Alternative Kingston Heritage Trail’ (running until 1 November) which is an alternative heritage and sculpture trail around Kingston town centre that questions the role of monuments in shaping collective memory. Puntar holds an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston and a BA in Sculpture from the University of Maryland, College Park. She has been an artist-in-residence at institutions such as Wysing Arts Centre in Cambridge and Eltham College in Southeast London. Additionally, she is a member of Cubitt Artists in London, where she previously served as Studio Artist Co-Chair of Public Programmes
For more information please contact: Georgia Griffiths, georgia@niruratnam.com