Touch me!

Neuenschwander installation

This last months Barcelona's CaixaForum hosts the series Què pensar? Què desitjar? Què fer? (What to think? What to wish? What to do?) from La Caixa's collection of contemporary art, divided into three periods. Until Abril 8^th we can see the artwork from the second part of the series, the one called Què desitjar?, where we'll find one of the most iconic installations of the series, which actually gives name to this particular period: I wish your wish, by Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander. The work is a big polyethylene panel that covers all the wall and from which are hanged thousands of coloured ribbons with wishes the artist asked her friends to write. We can find from “I wish other people's wishes to come true”, like “I wish to make friends at school”, “I wish a fairer world” or “I wish I could travel in time and space”. The viewer stands suddenly in front of the whole range of ribbons and a small poster announcing the rules of the game: "Chose a wish and take it with you. Tie it to your wrist with two rounds and three knots” in the same way of the bracelets we used to wear when we were kids. Thus a link is established between the visitor's childhood and the artwork, spending minutes and minutes looking for the wish that best suits you and, often, looking after the room's guard double-checking if the ribbons can be taken for real. Leaving aside Neuenschwander work, so tender and original, I wanted to talk about our difficulty to play with art, to touch artwork. The history of our art and culture has taught us that art has somehow like an aura (if I am aloud once more to take Walter Benjamin as a reference), away and high, being a sacrilege to touch it; but we are forgetting that sometimes contemporary art is made to play with it, to interact, and this it is not complete until the viewer intervention. It seems hard for us to interact with artwork, we use to think it is something forbidden. We ask for permission to guides or guards, and even if we have been told we can touch or we have read instructions, we act taken by a prohibitive anxiety. An example I remember is when I visited the Museo Vostell Malpartida in Cáceres (Spain), where there were various artwork you had to interact with, like chairs you needed to sit on or a room full of dirt you had to clean or mess with a hover, according to your personality. Or the 54^th Venetian Biennial, in 2011, where at the Spanish Pavilion entrance two assistants startled the visitor with personal questions while making them walk over a tiled path that was part of the installation.

It seems to be hard when we have, when we can touch an artwork, it still seems like a blasphemy against art, but at the same time we feel the joy of reaching what is forbidden; that's why from Cultural Crops we encourage you fervently to participate, touch and play with the artwork because it is, at last, a two way game between author-artwork-receptor.

Guiomar Sánchez

@guiomar_sp