Marta Minujín — A Legend of the Arts
Marta Minujín is an Argentinian contemporary artist who lives to provoke her audience. In most of her works, the artist forces the public and art to interact through technology, music, performances, and paintings which are all essential for creating her signature participatory events. These events go by the name of happenings; also known as ‘performance art’. They create an ideal setting, in which the observer uses most of his senses and their level of participation is correlative to the person’s enjoyment of the art piece.
An ideal example is Marta Minujín’s Minuphone, which she brought to life in 1967 in the United States, during her time in New York. The Minuphone was an instantaneous happening where the public was asked to step into a public phone and dial a number. The event would last for three minutes. Every number dialed would trigger a different sequence of psychedelic images and events, sometimes pictures would be taken of the participant, lights would begin flashing, wind would envelope the person dialing, or colored water would start ascending. What is more, throughout the performance the observer would have been videotaped, and at a specific point of the experience they would be asked to look down and see themselves on a TV screen located in the floor.
Marta Minujín’s Minuphone was meant to be an insult to consumerism and Technology’s disconcerting defects. With her thought-inducing pieces Minujín is known for targeting global preoccupations regarding societies’ major flaws. As is described by the artist herself, Minuphone’s goal was to demonstrate how public phones would isolate human beings from reality, enveloping them in their conversations.
What is most particular about Minuphone is its ability to alienate people from their surroundings. Once you stepped inside the public phone, these psychedelic images were meant to take the individual into a “psychedelic trip”, as is explained by Marta Minujín, extracting you from the realm of busy New York.
With the wonders of technology, Minujín was aiming to take her viewers on a psychedelic trip, using every human sense possible in order to make the experience as real as her resources could permit.
Minuphone is merely one example of Marta Minujin’s incomparable performances, which have reached varying cities throughout the world — Paris, New York, Buenos Aires. The exceptional artist has shaken up millions of spectators throughout her career, incentivizing contemporary activist claims and targeting tabooed topics nonstop. Her unique performances have reached thousands so far, and this genius artist is most definitely not planning to wind down.
