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.
Minujín’s work is all about participation – or joining in. She makes art that people don’t just look at but must actively encounter with.
She sees her role as one of intensifying people’s lives by getting them to experience things and feelings they normally wouldn’t.
Minujín continues to satirize consumer culture (particularly relating to women). She is well known for her belief that "everything is art."
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Sources Consulted
https://www.artsy.net/artist/marta-minujin
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marta_Minuj%C3%ADn
https://www.tate.org.uk/kids/explore/who-is/who-marta-minujin