Jenny Marketou: FRAGILE @ Kunsthalle Athina

Kunsthalle Athina-The BAR, Athens, Greece
May 13 -17, 2010
Open Event/ Performance/Intervention/Protest

www.kunsthalleathena.org

A FRAGILE PROJECT

FRAGILE is a hybrid between a performance and a public intervention, which combines art and fashion within the social structure of a social gathering with the conscious attempt to politicize public space without taking an overt political position. I like to call it sociable art which creates contexts for interaction and communication in public space .To achieve this the audience is dressed in A shaped dresses made out of paper which are bearing the word FRAGILE as a cut out. The paper-thin wearable have been designed and produced by the artist especially for this event.

The idea for the title and the use of the word FRAGILE stands for the mankind’s current “fragile” state in the art, the social space and its function, the environment and the commerce from which we are immunized or/and are protected from the constant visible fear instilled by the culture of chaos and in its most radical forms of communication such as the tabloid media and the spokesmen of violent radical consensus.
By using the word FRAGILE again and again the repetition disintegrates language and at the end the word becomes an empty space. A space made out of language. FRAGILE is not a message any more but a force which invigorates the “body”.

photo by Jenny Marketou

photo by Dimitris Papadopoulos

Thin as Paper

With their seductive and colorful beauty one hundred (100) A shape (34” L X 28” W) garments made out of recycle paper in red, yellow, blue, magenta, which each of them bears in front and back as a cut out the word FRAGILE are distributed for free to 100 guests to be worn over their street clothes during the entire opening night of the exhibition.

Yet their beauty is precarious leading deep and reflecting on the conditions of life. All guests by wearing FRAGILE they are aware that they are placing him or her self consciously in the role of the performer and they accept to be part of a peaceful demonstration of protest against the fragile state of our culture in the presence of such overwhelming financial crisis and chaos which has affected the cultural, the social, the environmental and the political space in the entire world. It is up to each participant as to what and how she/he wants to unveil or to express her/his FRAGILE U that evening.

Each paper dress stands as a symbol of our determination to restoring balance, democracy, peace and priorities to constructive action, responsibility and justice and caring.

At the end of the evening participants keep FRAGILE to take home no matter in what condition it is unless she/he prefers to write their name and drop it in the X container for recycling after the end of this event.