The subject of what is and isn’t art is something that has long been hotly debated, and the recent interactive project You are what you buy certainly rekindled the debate.
No pop culturista worth his or her salt can claim not to have at least glimpsed the ubiquitous Warholian Campbell’s canned soup montage. Stacked neatly next to each other, row upon row, there was nothing particularly striking about the cans in question. However, Warhol was one of the first of the contemporaries to take an interest in what many considered to be the mundane, even worthless.
Deadpan and unflinching in the face of all the criticism he must have known he was going to face, Warhol remained steadfast in his belief that even the most insignificant of things can become an expression of art and encapsulate a greater level of meaning. His wish to be seen as an anti-artist ironically transposed to his work and had the effect of waking up people to seek meaning in the most unlikely places.
It was the latter sentiment that greatly struck me on learning about Kristina Borg’s recent project: You are what you buy. Born from the artist’s habit of collecting receipts for no reason in particular, Borg realised that – although many people completely ignore their receipts and throw them away almost as quickly as they receive them – much could be discerned about a person’s identity just by taking a quick look at these insignificant pieces of paper.
This thought set the ball rolling for many questions about whether or not art itself had become a consumable, and led to the week-long live performance project that took place at Park Towers Supermarket in Santa Venera, paired with a concurrent exhibition at St James Cavalier, Valletta, which showcased everything from a trolley with food suspended in mid-air over it, to people’s discarded shopping lists and receipts.
An intelligent piece which celebrated the intricacies of what art means to the individual
Being very much of the Tracy Emin school of thought, I was more than a bit interested in the pop-up or performance art part of the project and, after visiting Park Towers on the Friday, I was far from disappointed by the impact the band of talented performers that Borg had on board made among unsuspecting consumers.
At first, I was worried I might not find them: instructed to expect the unexpected, I wandered around the shop floors aimlessly for about half an hour till I almost charged right into one of the performers wearing what looked like a massive plastic bubble around herself. Standing in the middle of a toiletries aisle, one would be forgiven for thinking that she was taking part in some kind of washing liquid promotion.
But the minute she was approached by another performer I came to understand that the idea of the personal space we all attempt to get when shopping was being conveyed.
The genius thing about this particular concept was not only the fact that one was forced to respect the performer’s personal space in tangible terms, but it also had the dual effect of showing the fact that we all enter commercial spheres with our own ideas and concepts; our own unique understandings of the world.
That said, despite the singularity of each and every one of us, it was interesting to see the actions of the performer in the bubble be mimicked by another performer. I took this particular fact to mean that despite our uniqueness, we many times buy into something because we see others do it. In many ways, none of us want to feel left out.
That was, however, where the mimicry ended. When I got into the lift I soon noticed I was in for one of the most unusual rides of my life: in the midst of all the busy people getting on and off the middle lift, a performer stood at the centre, changing his positions every few seconds. The reactions he generated were priceless; I thought one of the ladies standing next to me would faint when his arm contorted into what looked like a Nazi salute.
What made it so remarkable was the fact that something that one would never associate with a supermarket ordinarily was happening right there and then. Miriam Calleja read her beautiful poetry in another of the lifts: the juxtaposition of her melodic words being read out in such a humdrum ordinary setting brought out its beauty even more. Although on the surface of it the reading might seem almost banal, one felt even more in tune to what she was saying because it was so out of place on a supermarket floor.
The subject of what is and isn’t art is something that has long been hotly debated and, ironically, was the foundation stone for the aforementioned soup cans which brought so many art critics of the day to a confused impasse. You are what you buy was not only a well-informed and intelligent piece that wildly celebrated the intricacies of what art means to the individual but it was also a social commentary of the ordinary, and how much of ourselves goes into each experience. Avid consumer that I am, I definitely bought into what Borg was selling.