Artist:
Marta Minujin
Title:
Torre de Babel
Year:
2011
Adress:
Plaza General San Martin (temporary)
Website:
www.instituteforpublicart.org:
The installation consisted of a seven-story, twenty-five meter metal scaffolding hung with wire netting, which displayed over 80,000 books. The books were donated from embassies all over the world and represent all genres and over 40 languages. Groups of 100 people toured the work over the course of its installation period.
Once inside Torre de Babel, the public could peruse the book titles and listen a recording of the word 'book' spoken repetitively, like music or chanting, in many languages. On the last day of the installation, individuals were invited to take a book of their choosing. Leftover books are part of an archive entitled The Library of Babel, which was donated to the Gálvez Public Library.
Marta Minujàn's Torre de Babel was temporarily installed in Buenos Aires' Plaza San Martin from May 13-28, 2011 in celebration of the city being named the Book World Capital.
www.instituteforpublicart.org:
The title of Minujàn's work refers t the Tower of Babel, which has its origins in the Judeo-Christian tradition in the book of Genesis, but is also referenced by other ancient traditions in similar stories. The myth is of a powerful group of people striving to build a tower to heaven. God confuses them by inventing languages, thus ending their ability to communicate and forcing them to abandon the project and scatter over the earth. The moral of the story is about pride, and the myth points to the origins of languages.
The Tower of Babel has been a common motif throughout art history and a symbol of language and knowledge for Western culture. In this work, Minujàn played on these themes, but the work also served a greater function in the public realm. It referenced the innate human desire to understand and be understood, as well as the frustration that results when there is an inability to communicate and learn from one another. Participants who came to Torre de Babelwere given the opportunity to understand and be understood. Those who too away the books are re-enacting the myth, destroying the tower and scattering the knowledge and languages out into the world. They came together with a common purpose for the sake of art, which, as Minujàn says, ultimately needs no translation.
www.artmsg2016.wordpress.com:
Working methods
Paintings and original works She started painting around 1959, and she was fascinated by multicolours works during these years.
Later, she also used various materials to work: there are sculptures in neon lights for example, or in fabrics'¦ She made many coloured things, as one work looking like marshmallows, walls of colours etc. She made performance too, we can think about when she enters in her installations for example.
When she had this psychedelic period, she has also worked with mattresses, windows'¦
I cannot event talk about all the materials she used, as mentioned in the previous article, she created psychedelic telephone booths for example (Minuphone, 1976).
Happeniem>
I cannot write this article without talking about happenings. In the 70's, she was involved to criticize the reality in Latin America. For that, she made a lot of happenings, as there are multiple examples in the previous article. Her first one was La destruccion, 1963, and then Simultaneidad en Simultaneidad (1966), about the concept simultaneity. It was part of the Three Countries Happening, with Allan Kaprow (New York) and Wolf Vostell (Berlin).
That shows she loves ephemeral works, and she wants people to participate. They can participate by being part of the work, by interacting with it, by touching it, destroying it'¦ That means, for her, spectators are not passive, they take part in the work or the exhibition. Materials are not important here, the public is. That is also linked to improvisation and ephemerality.
www.artmsg2016.wordpress.com:
Immediately, I have liked her universe, her unusual way, her originality. She seems completely crazy. Of course, I have checked that shtted with all criteria we had: she is alive, born after 1973, really famous, she was born and lives currently in Buenos Aires'¦ She even has been exposed at the Venice Biennale.
Another thing that oriented my choice of this artist is that her work is crazy, but she also involves a lot Buenos Aires or contemporary subjects in her art (she is against violence, she did works related to the Argentinean history'¦). That was an important thing to me.
Her works are also really different: there are sculptures in neon, in tissus, walls of colours, coloured things looking like marshmallows, she enters in her installations'¦ She did a lot of happenings and performances too (but the mark is harder to find for these works).
And her attitude amuses me. She has already said 'Creo que soy Dalà en mujer. Tengo ese espàritu: él era increàblemente juguetón. No paraba.' (I think that I am Dalà in woman. I have this spirit: he was incredibly playful and do not stop).
Marta Minujàn is born the 30th ofSan Telmo, neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She comes from a middle-class family, and her parents were really strict. She described herself her childhood as 'horrible'. She studied at the national schools of fine arts of Buenos Aires (Escuelas Nacionales de Bellas Artes de Buenos Aires).
At the age of sixteen, in 1959, she married an economist, Juan Gómez Sabaini. She will have two children with him. And at the same age, she presented her first exhibition at the Teatro Agón and had a scholarship from the National Arts Foundation, which allowed her to travel to France. She featured in Pablo Curatella Manes y treinta argentinos de la Nueva Generación.
She stayed there two years and was one of the youngest famous Argentinian artists. She went back in Paris in 1962 thanks to an other scholarship and she started to create 'happenings' there. La Destrucción was her first one (1963), where she invited various artists to destroy several of her works of art assembled.
Back in Buenos Aitinued happenings and performances. In 1964 she won first prize at the national awards of the Torcuato Di Tella Institute with her work ¡Revuelquese y Viva! (Roll Around and Live!). She wondered about the redefinition of art's purpose and grew more interested in the medium as the message.
Over the next 20 years, she had been part of every avant-garde movement and befriended about everyone in the art world.
Indeed, in 1966 she won the Guggenheim Foundation scholarship that took her to New York. She stayed there in the 70's and met Andy Warhol, who influenced her discovering the world of Pop Art, she started to satirize consumer culture. She also began, in the same years, psychedelic arts. One of her best-known creations from this period is the Minuphone (1967), where people could enter a telephone booth, dial a number, and be surprised by colours projecting from the glass panels, sounds, and seeing themselves on a television screen in the floor.
She finally settled again to Argentina in 1976, e end of the military dictatorship in Argentina, and started series of reproductions of Paris in plasters, miniatures of the Venus de Milo, of Buenos Aires Obelisk, of Carlos Gandel (the 'father of tango')...
She also made El Parthenón de Libros (Parthenon of Books) in 1983, soon after that the power left, a piece of art with 25,000 books banned by the murderous military regime, and it had a huge impact.
She exhibited in every part of the world during her whole life, she is know worldwide and she lives and works in Buenos Aires. She continues being exhibit in several museums of Buenos Aires (MAMBA...) and in many international galleries or private collections: her works are featured everywhere in public but also private collections: at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), Art Museum of the Americas (Washington D.C.), Olympic Park (Seoul, Korea), the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, MALBA (Buenos Aires), Museum of Modern Art (New York), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris)...
The installation consisted of a seven-story, twenty-five meter metal scaffolding hung with wire netting, which displayed over 80,000 books. The books were donated from embassies all over the world and represent all genres and over 40 languages. Groups of 100 people toured the work over the course of its installation period.
Once inside Torre de Babel, the public could peruse the book titles and listen a recording of the word 'book' spoken repetitively, like music or chanting, in many languages. On the last day of the installation, individuals were invited to take a book of their choosing. Leftover books are part of an archive entitled The Library of Babel, which was donated to the Gálvez Public Library.
Marta Minujàn's Torre de Babel was temporarily installed in Buenos Aires' Plaza San Martin from May 13-28, 2011 in celebration of the city being named the Book World Capital.
www.instituteforpublicart.org:
The title of Minujàn's work refers t the Tower of Babel, which has its origins in the Judeo-Christian tradition in the book of Genesis, but is also referenced by other ancient traditions in similar stories. The myth is of a powerful group of people striving to build a tower to heaven. God confuses them by inventing languages, thus ending their ability to communicate and forcing them to abandon the project and scatter over the earth. The moral of the story is about pride, and the myth points to the origins of languages.
The Tower of Babel has been a common motif throughout art history and a symbol of language and knowledge for Western culture. In this work, Minujàn played on these themes, but the work also served a greater function in the public realm. It referenced the innate human desire to understand and be understood, as well as the frustration that results when there is an inability to communicate and learn from one another. Participants who came to Torre de Babelwere given the opportunity to understand and be understood. Those who too away the books are re-enacting the myth, destroying the tower and scattering the knowledge and languages out into the world. They came together with a common purpose for the sake of art, which, as Minujàn says, ultimately needs no translation.
www.artmsg2016.wordpress.com:
Working methods
Paintings and original works She started painting around 1959, and she was fascinated by multicolours works during these years.
Later, she also used various materials to work: there are sculptures in neon lights for example, or in fabrics'¦ She made many coloured things, as one work looking like marshmallows, walls of colours etc. She made performance too, we can think about when she enters in her installations for example.
When she had this psychedelic period, she has also worked with mattresses, windows'¦
I cannot event talk about all the materials she used, as mentioned in the previous article, she created psychedelic telephone booths for example (Minuphone, 1976).
Happeniem>
I cannot write this article without talking about happenings. In the 70's, she was involved to criticize the reality in Latin America. For that, she made a lot of happenings, as there are multiple examples in the previous article. Her first one was La destruccion, 1963, and then Simultaneidad en Simultaneidad (1966), about the concept simultaneity. It was part of the Three Countries Happening, with Allan Kaprow (New York) and Wolf Vostell (Berlin).
That shows she loves ephemeral works, and she wants people to participate. They can participate by being part of the work, by interacting with it, by touching it, destroying it'¦ That means, for her, spectators are not passive, they take part in the work or the exhibition. Materials are not important here, the public is. That is also linked to improvisation and ephemerality.
www.artmsg2016.wordpress.com:
Immediately, I have liked her universe, her unusual way, her originality. She seems completely crazy. Of course, I have checked that shtted with all criteria we had: she is alive, born after 1973, really famous, she was born and lives currently in Buenos Aires'¦ She even has been exposed at the Venice Biennale.
Another thing that oriented my choice of this artist is that her work is crazy, but she also involves a lot Buenos Aires or contemporary subjects in her art (she is against violence, she did works related to the Argentinean history'¦). That was an important thing to me.
Her works are also really different: there are sculptures in neon, in tissus, walls of colours, coloured things looking like marshmallows, she enters in her installations'¦ She did a lot of happenings and performances too (but the mark is harder to find for these works).
And her attitude amuses me. She has already said 'Creo que soy Dalà en mujer. Tengo ese espàritu: él era increàblemente juguetón. No paraba.' (I think that I am Dalà in woman. I have this spirit: he was incredibly playful and do not stop).
Marta Minujàn is born the 30th ofSan Telmo, neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She comes from a middle-class family, and her parents were really strict. She described herself her childhood as 'horrible'. She studied at the national schools of fine arts of Buenos Aires (Escuelas Nacionales de Bellas Artes de Buenos Aires).
At the age of sixteen, in 1959, she married an economist, Juan Gómez Sabaini. She will have two children with him. And at the same age, she presented her first exhibition at the Teatro Agón and had a scholarship from the National Arts Foundation, which allowed her to travel to France. She featured in Pablo Curatella Manes y treinta argentinos de la Nueva Generación.
She stayed there two years and was one of the youngest famous Argentinian artists. She went back in Paris in 1962 thanks to an other scholarship and she started to create 'happenings' there. La Destrucción was her first one (1963), where she invited various artists to destroy several of her works of art assembled.
Back in Buenos Aitinued happenings and performances. In 1964 she won first prize at the national awards of the Torcuato Di Tella Institute with her work ¡Revuelquese y Viva! (Roll Around and Live!). She wondered about the redefinition of art's purpose and grew more interested in the medium as the message.
Over the next 20 years, she had been part of every avant-garde movement and befriended about everyone in the art world.
Indeed, in 1966 she won the Guggenheim Foundation scholarship that took her to New York. She stayed there in the 70's and met Andy Warhol, who influenced her discovering the world of Pop Art, she started to satirize consumer culture. She also began, in the same years, psychedelic arts. One of her best-known creations from this period is the Minuphone (1967), where people could enter a telephone booth, dial a number, and be surprised by colours projecting from the glass panels, sounds, and seeing themselves on a television screen in the floor.
She finally settled again to Argentina in 1976, e end of the military dictatorship in Argentina, and started series of reproductions of Paris in plasters, miniatures of the Venus de Milo, of Buenos Aires Obelisk, of Carlos Gandel (the 'father of tango')...
She also made El Parthenón de Libros (Parthenon of Books) in 1983, soon after that the power left, a piece of art with 25,000 books banned by the murderous military regime, and it had a huge impact.
She exhibited in every part of the world during her whole life, she is know worldwide and she lives and works in Buenos Aires. She continues being exhibit in several museums of Buenos Aires (MAMBA...) and in many international galleries or private collections: her works are featured everywhere in public but also private collections: at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), Art Museum of the Americas (Washington D.C.), Olympic Park (Seoul, Korea), the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, MALBA (Buenos Aires), Museum of Modern Art (New York), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris)...