Here, Today
- Paulie
- Jun 24, 2023
- 5 min read
Dude, where's my art?
Most of us like when things last a long time. Love, good weather, your favourite pair of socks. But there’s something to appreciate about a fleeting moment, something you must commit to memory as fast as you can. A firework having its bright, beautiful moment before fading away forever. This week we’re talking about ephemeral art - artwork which is designed not to last for whatever reason, due to the materials used, the nature of performance or through human intervention. Tuck in luv.
Néle Azevedo
Brazilian visual artist and sculptor Néle Azevedo has been watching us melt away since 2005. The Minimum Monument which first exhibited in São Paulo in 2005 is a public art piece featuring hundreds of 20 centimetre tall ice sculptures, faceless humans in relaxed seated positions. While the climate change statement is there to see, the original intention of the work was to critique public monuments and to take into account “the history of the defeated, the anonymous, to bring to light our mortal condition”. In other words, who do we celebrate with our metal statues? Our marble busts? The Minimum Monument celebrates those lost to history, the victims of policy, the people who fall in between the cracks in the tectonic shifts of state and religion.
