practice-based research project

Case Study One – La Destruccion

Intensify Life at Copenhagen Contemporary introduced me to the work of Marta Minujín – an Argentine conceptual artist. Her work spans the visual and the performed, arising out of countercultural movements and seeking to blend the artistic with the political. Copenhagen Contemporary focused their exhibition on La Menesunda, an installation designed to replicate the streets of Buenos Aires, her home.

Minujín’s work often took place as Happenings, her art focused on space and world relations - particularly in bringing Latin American political messaging into the New York streets. Kidnappening was her MoMA based performance inspired by political kidnappings, staging an abduction of audience members from the Midtown gallery.  

Her art as countercultural focused on challenge and change – how she could oppose the mainstream, spread political awareness, and work within avantgarde realms. Given the nature of Happenings being staged events, and their taking place in the 60s, documentation of this work is limited. Yet, Copenhagen Contemporary still managed to incorporate her performances into their retrospective.

Their Kidnappening feature displayed letters written by audience members, recounting and reflecting on their experiences. I enjoyed reading their varied thoughts, proving how performance art can be interpreted and experienced through layers of lenses. Whilst not a direct correlation to Minujín’s work, methodologies of preservation allowed me to consider extending the intimacy of my own performance into a more accessible digital installation. Exclusivity and individuality is unavoidable in one-to-one performance, and I wanted to utilise the fleeting present as well as eternalising parts of it.

La Destruccion became a stimulus for my performance – as a response and reversal. Within this piece Minujín set her own works of art alight, their burning becoming art in itself and provided reminders of mortality and impermanence. Initially, I responded in following a flower’s destruction – my work in progress sharing gradually picking apart a rose, petal by petal. Yet, through observing nature’s decline I was brought back to new life being made from existing ones. Once the petals fall, seeds are dispersed and allow rebirth. As Minujín manufactured an ending, explored manufacturing a beginning. I knew I wanted to incorporate audience involvement with the ritualistic style of her destruction. I revisited the planting I had conducted with recycled material – cycles of thought proving where substance lies.

What I love about her artistic approach is the commitment to performance art, AND visual art, AND politics – and seek to emulate myself.