As a new approach to the 60’s movement “Mail Art”, the project “Parede” aims to promote visual artists dialogs in the exchange of art through mail, building and rebuilding an art collection (which will be exhibited on the wall of my house and weekly showed online at my site) through the Internet viewer’s participation. Such a form of artistic curation questions the idea of collecting and exchanging artwork, as well as the limits between the physical (domestic, private) and the virtual (public, foreign, undomesticated) space of an exhibition.
“Parede” will take place on one of the walls at my house. I have selected ten visual artists who will be the project’s founders, and whose work will be donated and displayed on this wall. For the period of six months the wall will be photographed weekly and showed online at www.anamappe.com.br/parede.
Through the Internet, viewers may purchase an artwork from the wall by switching it with another artwork. It is an exchange of art (and a communication of artistic perceptions), that shall be made by mail, and that requires no other fees or charges. At the end of the six months the remaining artworks on the wall will be donated back to the first ten visual artists, the founders of “parede”.
Since André Malraux’s Le Musée imaginaire, the boundaries of a museum have been discussed, and many new forms of exhibitions have been developed over the years. Project “Parede” suggests a new form of deconstructing the idea of an “art collection”, problematizing its financial trading aspects (as the exchange of artworks requires only mail taxes), and provoking a public reflection of the viewers’ art selections.
Since the wall will be photographed and filmed to be displayed online, not only its audience will be amplified, but most importantly it will promote a worldwide interaction (re-empowering the ‘museum’s online visitors’ with the possibility to engage with the art displayed), making it thus more likely that the restrained aspects highlighted by Foucault’s museum definition could be (partially) overcome. “Parede” takes the artwork out of its natural place, display it in ‘domestic/museum-like’ wall, and shows it online, putting into question the museum’s main categories of physicality, collection, financially trading and confinement.
Private Project, Belo Horizonte, 2012