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[30. maj 2002]
Event
Christiana de Melo The
Red Tent 2002
THE RED TENT by Cristiana de Melo
A fragile point of tension one afternoon
on the streets of Copenhagen, as part of The Contemplation Room
Project. Text by Cristiana de Melo
and Sophie Pucill. Images by Sophie Pucill & co.
www.contemplation.dk
London based Brazilian artist and curator Cristiana de Melo
articulates a red art piece in the streets of Copenhagen as part
of the Contemplation Room Project exhibition.
On Wednesday the 29th of May at four o’clock in the afternoon,
just as people begin to start coming home from work, artist Christiana
De Melo performed her work The Red Tent on the pavement
of Baldersgade 70 in Copenhagen.
The red tent contemplation room is a fragile structure where the
artist, transformed by a red cloth, performs ritualistic actions
based on research in to the understanding of female energy / roles
in Western Culture. A central strategy is transforming the audience
into becoming participants, and hereby the audience into becoming
the art.
Wrapped in red cloth she offered to wash peoples feet, just outside
the entrance of the red tent. The public could sit in a chair, have
their shoes and socks removed by this young woman kneeling on the
ground and have their naked feet bathed in warm water from a metal
bucket; the water poured over the feet using a cup, the water falling
down and splashing against the pavement. The artist gently rubbing
the feet with her hands.
After this the feet were dried carefully and meticulously, with
very clean and very white individual pieces of white cotton cloth.
Then the socks and shoes were put back on.
With this rather intimate, slightly disturbing, gently serious and
very refreshing ritual, the people with clean and fresh feet could
finally enter the red tent. Here, inside all the red, there was
a red candle a light, and a bowl of chewy roasted seeds on the once
pavement now tent floor. A place to contemplate, and meet people.
As people had there feet washed and entered The Red Tent,
the space inside became filled up with the people from the outside.
Inside the red space everything was coloured red, and it was really
very beautiful.
Christiana de Melo's selected exhibitions include a solo
show at The London Bienalle 2000 (The Game - D.I.Y, Artists
Gallery, London). She has also successfully curated shows in Europe
and Latin America (The Translatino Highway, the Latin Program
of The London Bianallo 2000, 291 Gallery London, and Rio Trajetorias,
a quasi biennalle with 104 artists from all over the world exhibiting
all over Rio de Janero in November 2001.
The next Red Tent, a chance to contemplate red in the streets
of Copenhagen will be on Wednesday the 5th of June at 16:00, in
Prinsessegade, in front of Christianias old entrance, next to the
Frihedsgudinde. See press
release.
www.contemplation.dk
More:
Contemplation Room
Project
Contemplation Room
Events
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