marta minujín

I was introduced to Marta Minjuín in an exhibition spanning the breadth of her career at Copenhagen Contemporary, earlier this year. Intensify Life showcased her more recent visual creations blending video with colour, alongside curated memorabilia from various Happenings she staged in through the 60s, and a couple of her installations - including La Menesunda from 1965, one of the first immersive exhibits in the art world.

The conceptual and aesthetic dimensions of her work captivated me, particularly in her insistence of making art a part of everyday life.

Happenings

  • As Minujín’s first Happening, La Destrucción was a ritualistic destruction of her own work, with the act of destrucing being the art itself.

    Conceptually, Happenings were event-focused forms of performance art seeking to blend art with reality in new ways. They allowed Minujín to participate in countercultural movements within the art world!

    Within La Destrucción, she manufactures value in what is lost BECAUSE of the impermanent and mortal nature of the event. It is ‘not just a physical destruction, but also a creative process in which the action itself became the work’, as Intensify Life recognises. By moving away from the material, into the physical world around her, she transcended boundaries and redefined art.

    In terms of the Happening itself, she released animals amongst manipulated sculptures, eventually setting them on fire.

    I’m interested to research replicating the destructive elements of her work - particularly in the burning of creations to enhance the value of temporality.

  • Immersion and audience participation was often focal in Minujín’s work - such as the Minuphone immersive installation inspired by phone booths in NYC.

    A fully sensory experience, the booth was triggered by action into emitting light, or smoke, or paint within - creating both a sensory sensation for the participant, and a display for onlookers outside the booth.

    I’m fascinated by the ways the booth reacted to the participant, in terms of knock on effects to their actions, as well as the way they are themselves transformed into the art.

  • With it’s name being a blend of KIDNAPPING and HAPPENING, Minujín’s staged abduction of audience members from the MoMA garden brings a political dimension into a literal art space, in the form of institution.

    Inspired by the political kidnappings in Latin America in the 1970s, Minujín’s work here sought to be shocking, to create disruption, and to involve the community as a means of spreading awareness and rooting change.

La Menesunda

  • immersive, eleven rooms/sites

  • one person at a time ! makes the experience highly personal and self-governed

  • reflects the life of Buenos Aires, where Minujín lives and works

  • includes 3 live-actors - which took me by surprise

  • makes the audience ACTIVE - in their pursuit and following through the installation

  • focus on CHOICE - the route is straightforward, but viewers need to choose their pace, and their actions within each space

  • notable rooms - first ‘street’ lit with neon signs, makeup parlour allowing visitors to have blush applied by the actor, fridge room, final mirror room

  • play with texture and space throughout - different materials used to build walls, floors, spaces

Contexts

world relations

Marta Minujín’s work generally took place outside of gallery spaces, but is often closely intertwined with them. For example, Kidnappening began at MoMA, despite it’s intent to transport audience members across the city.

Her installation works through the 60s and 70s were groundbreaking at the time, setting the precedent for decades of art to follow.

Often her installations and Happenings were closely inspired by and linked to city spaces - particularly NY and Buenos Aires. Her political messaging frequently linked to her home country, Argentina, and wider Latin America.

preoccupations

Counterculture is at the centre of her artistic and political motivations -acting against the status quo of both worlds and seeking to blend the two together. Responding to the world in avant garde means is Minujín’s style.

contextual explorations

Conceptually, she again seeks to blend worlds. Not only the political and artistic, but the art and the real. By bringing art into the streets, or other unconventional sites, she opens possibility to define art outside traditional spaces, feeding into her avant garde methodologies.

She focused on ACTION becoming her work, live art at its core. However, some of her installation work (such as her focus on mattresses) is highly reliant on materiality, particularly the meanings provided by these materials themselves.

WHY marta minujín?

I LOVE the idea that the Happening, the event, the art itself is made valuable by its LIVE PRESENCE.

Whilst displays and curations are fascinating and important, the necessity for presence in the moment of artistic happening is so fascinating to me, because of the reliance on impermanence and a lack of simple replication.

The spaces she uses are fundamental in the WAY she stages her work. Choosing sites so specifically feeds into the idea that every component of her art is of value and careful consideration.