Personnel 3, 2003

Tapies Foundation (Fundacio Antoni Tapies), Barcelona, Spain

Created for the traveling group exhibition, Indivisuals

For the Tapies Foundation, where office storage was found to be one of the most pressing problems afflicting an overworked and understaffed institution, I developed a unique reservoir for drinking water Well (see video and images) as well as wearable shelving units Portable Workspaces. The latter structures, fabricated to function as clothing, furniture and architecture simultaneously, were on wheels and meant to be worn/inhabited by the office staff, who could use them as portable work and storage spaces. The pieces were also symbolic: constructed to overwhelm the wearer, they made movement awkward and the performance of even the simplest task difficult. In this way, they represented the extensive and multiple jobs of the Tapies staff, and denoted some of the problems that arise when each individual carries too much responsibility. At the same time the skirts were strong and quite able to support their heavy load, despite the stress, and could therefore appear rather poignantly heroic.

Another aspect of this installation (realized only in digitally manipulated photographs) envisions a spatial transformation of a seldom used courtyard at the museum. The proposed alterations include wrapping the courtyard in a large backdrop curtain digitally printed with a bucolic 19th century landscape, as well as fabric structures, also digitally printed, which are meant to invoke the landscape and values of pre-industrial Barcelona.

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