‘I hope people remember it all their lives’: Why Marta Minujín wants to destroy Big Ben

She partied with Warhol, rollerskated with Rauschenberg and fed Brazilians a giant panettone phallus. Now Marta Minujín is set to dismantle a replica of Britain’s big bonger – in Manchester

Next month, Marta Minujín, the Argentinian artist credited with being a pioneer of installation art, will create an artwork that has been 40 years in the making. Using a library of 20,000 books representing British politics, she aims to recreate London’s most iconic timepiece, Big Ben. The clock tower itself will be installed, lying horizontally and half the size of the original, in Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens. At the end of the show, the public will be invited to take a title home with them, the work slowly being destroyed tome by tome.

“There is a great artistic energy in destruction,” Minujín tells me from her home in Buenos Aires. “People will be together in an event that happens once and can never be repeated. It will stay only in the memory. It’s a strange happening that I hope people will remember all their lives and recall to those who couldn’t take part.”

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3A5xkvJ