Marta Minujín

Monica Blignaut
Oct 30, 2020
2 min read

Updated: Nov 23, 2020

Artist 269

Marta Minujín

Conceptual Art

Happenings

Marta Minujín is an Argentine artist who specializes in producing conceptual and participatory events, also known as “Happenings”.

Her time in Paris inspired her to create "livable sculptures," notably La Destrucción, in which she assembled mattresses along the Impasse Roussin, only to invite other avant-garde artists in her entourage, including Christo and Paul-Armand Gette, to destroy the display.

One of her best-known works from those years, Minuphone (1967), invited viewers to enter a telephone booth, dial a number, and watch as sounds and colors projected from the glass panels, while a television screen on the floor displayed the caller’s face.

In 1983, following the return of democracy to Argentina, Minujin created a monument to freedom of expression, The Parthenon of Books (1983), in which a structure built of newly unbanned books was erected in the middle of a Buenos Aires thoroughfare; after it was dismantled, the books were distributed to the public.

In 2017, Minujín went on to make a second Partheon of Banned Books in Kassel, Germany. Arranging 100,000 banned books into a replica of the Partheon in Athens, Minujín honors those books that were censored and subsequently burned by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s. The created a full-scale replica was a symbol of resistance to political repression at the Historic Nazi Book Burning Site. Similarly to the 1983 Partheon, the books were distributed to people around the world when the work was dismantled.