Eleven Heavy Things
2009
Eleven Heavy Things, created for the 53rd International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, is comprised of eleven sculptural works installed in an enclosed garden within Giardino delle Vergini. The cast fiber-glass, steel-lined pieces are designed for interaction: pedestals to stand on, tablets with holes for body parts, and free-standing abstract headdresses. A series of three pedestals in ascending height, The Guilty One, The Guiltier One, The Guiltiest One, ask the viewer to ascribe their guilt relative to the people around them. A large flat shape, hand-painted with Burberry plaid, hovers on a pole, waiting to become someone’s aura. A series of tablets invite heads, arms, legs and one finger: This is not the first hole my finger has been in, nor will it be the last. A wider pedestal for two people to hug on reads, We don!t know each other, we’re just hugging for the picture….
July assumes and invites the picture — these are eleven photo opportunities, in a city where one is always clutching a camera. Though the work begins as sculpture, it becomes a performance that is only complete when these tourist photos are uploaded onto personal blogs and sent in emails — at which point the audience changes, and the subject clearly becomes the participants, revealing themselves through the work.
Eleven Heavy Things has been installed in the Center Lawn of Union Square Park in New York from May 29 to October 03, 2010.
Eleven Heavy Things has been installed at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles from July 23 to October 23, 2011.
Production of this work has been supported by Deitch Projects.
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Photos by Miranda July
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Photos by Lukas Wassmann
The Hallway
A 125 foot hallway lined with fifty wooden signs, hand-painted with text. As the viewer/participant walks down the seemingly endless hall, weaving between the signs, the text acts as an internal voice, “It’s too late to go back now, but the end seems far away…” The “you” in text realizes that you’ll be walking down this hallway for the rest of your life. And like life, the hall is filled with indecision, disappointment, boredom and joy – and it does end.
English in one direction, Japanese in the other.
Commissioned by the Yokohama Triennial, 2008. In the collection of The Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan.
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