Marienne Heier presents her works at Khoj
Money vs Value
Oslo based artist Marianne Heier attempts to deconstruct the economic system within the field of art. Recently she made a presentation on her works at the Khoj Studios, New Delhi. Rashika Ojha catches up with her and tries to explain Heier’s art projects.
What is money? A medium to communicate, communicate a relation based on different value systems, suggesting a give and take relationship sending across a message “…a promise to pay the sum”. As a gift, as remuneration, as donation or as a gesture in all its different forms the dynamics of money is incomparable.
Every morning starts with this urge to earn a living hence money in its respective forms. It is a catalytic element that infuses kinetics into our lives. Our daily functioning is regularized by this all encompassing monetary system which all of us bow to and crib for. Money is a need and obsession, as it is an obsessive need. It is one language that all of us understand as it has a single meaning that is ‘value’. Therefore, money is closely related to art as it quantifies ‘art’. But some artists try to visualize art divorced from the institution of money and Marianne Heier from Oslo belongs to this family of artists. Marianne has had a very interesting career as an artist because her inspiration for art comes from her everyday life that is oriented to work as a common woman and not restricted to the four walls of her studio.
At the Khoj Studio on 19th January 2007, Marianne shared her concepts revolving around her works which led to an interesting conversation with the students and artists present; it set the right mood for steaming discussion with a cup of tea with samosas and jalebis. Marianne began the talk by describing her first work that was an installation comprising a heap of money worth 170000 rupees. The process of this art work begins with her struggle to earn that money doing three jobs and saving, having no other life but just one single stream. She saves and displays her entire savings as an installation in Italy. Here she as an artist doesn’t consume or ask for money instead displays her money for consumption. Visitors engaged in the floating currency in various ways at times putting it openly into pockets, at times just fiddling with it like a toy. How beautifully Marianne reduces money the big word into a mere existence floating around like a toy. This work just introduces her mission, it was a statement but the action is still to come.
The action comes with her second work that is more a gesture than a work. Her second work called Permanent Installation was a gift to the owner of the Sparwasser HQ in Berlin. Marianne gifted an amount to the gallery for renovation, and this gift changed the appearance of the gallery. This gesture problematised the artistic position, social identity and physical station of the gallery as it questioned notions of the Bohemian artist and the concept of artists work and be in mess. She offers her art as a kind of service, gift and thereby confronts her recipients with a moral dilemma. Here, her actions start taking a shape to invert the identity of an artist and also the relation that an artist shares with an institution.
But as per the theory of mechanics every action has an equal and opposite reaction so the reaction to her services come across in her later works that take a political and social shape. Her work ‘Construction site’, where she gets refurbished the canteen of the crew of guards which she was a part of. This canteen was in the threshold of a museum, became important as it completely inverted the hierarchy. This threw an idea that art has the potentiality to change the existing circumstances. Also works such as A drop in the ocean, a social mission to save old structures soon took a political shape.
Marianne’s career graph is an ascending graph where she broadens her sphere as an artist by engaging to the farthest possible extend- from message to action to reaction. Such a trajectory is interesting as it tries to explore an alternative value system for art i.e. its immense potential to bring about a change. As it changes in the Sparwasser, as it does in the museum canteen and so on. This alternative system explores and communicates true value of art that is detached from money echoing Oscar Wilde.
“What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
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