From Frame to Life: Experiential Activation

The exhibition From Frame to Life: Experiential Activation is in dialogue with Bicho (Máquina-MD)(Animal (Machine-MD)), 1962, a sculpture created by Brazilian artist Lygia Clark, currently on display in the Peter B. Lewis Gallery at the Princeton University Art Museum. Although the geometric nature of the Bicho is clearly visible to the audience, its original intent is not: viewers are meant to activate the hinged metal sheets of the Bicho with their hands, thereby transforming its static objecthood into a participatory process indicative of motion, corporeality, and life. Responding to the logistic restrictions of the museum’s presentation of the Bicho, our exhibition explores its joint identity as a geometric structure and living organism. In this way, it addresses Clark’s transition from formal concerns about line and space to an emphasis on viewer participation in the realization of works of art. 

As an educational space associated with, yet still distinct from the museum, the Works on Paper Study Room is a fitting site for the experimental and alternative pedagogy proposed by From Frame to Life: Experiential Activation. By addressing tensions in the current presentation of the Bicho, our exhibition seeks to activate and engage the viewer. In so doing, we hope to offer new possibilities of experience that might otherwise not be possible within a museum setting. 

This installation has been organized by the students of the class Topics on 20th-Century Art: Exhibiting Experimentalism, taught in the Princeton University Art Museum by Irene Small, Assistant Professor of Art and Archeology, fall semester, 2014.
Participants: Olivia Adechi, Julia Bernstein, Robert Hinkle, Ariel Kungel, Elizabeth Lawless, Maddie Meyers, Sophia Williams, Caresse Yan