Mariela Limerutti Visual Artist, Argentina.


DIVINE_IN.TENT
Proyect for "Divine_in.tent" 2007 - Markers VI
Venice Biennale, Italy, and the Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany.
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PROJECT FOR "DIVINE_IN.TENT" 2007 - MARKERS VI

Independent intervention during the 52 Venice Biennale, Italy; and the Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany.

When I was 5 years old, during that winter, I was asked at school to bring warm clothes. The teachers were organizing to send them to the soldiers in the war that had just begun in the Falkland Islands. I wondered what those men really needed from us and especially from a child like me. I asked my mother to teach me to knit a scarf. I began it using different rests of colored wool knitting one after the other in stripes. But I didn't finish it in time to send it with the other things. The war finished and I continued knitting. After some years, I understood I had not finished it not because of a problem of time. I realized I had been afraid of going, through my scarf, to the war. When the scarf was ready, I wore it but only a couple of times; it was not mine, it was of the war…

In my project for "Divine_in.tent" I wanted to do a warm tent, not of isolating materials but of wool. I would knit a tent using only rests of wool that I could collect from women who used to knit. The scarf would be 20 meters long which will be joined by its sides to cover the 4 m˛ of the tent.

May be this tent would not be useful as a roof or protecting space, but instead the warm of the handwork would inhabit it. Knitting represents here women's work made at home while their husbands are at "any" war. Time of knitting is also related to Penelope in the Odyssey. Owing to her husband being at the war, she knitted during the day hours and undid parts of it during the nights to avoid finishing it and being obliged to get married again. The persistence to extend the time is a way to keep herself alive.

May be this tent would not be useful as a roof or protecting space, but instead the warm of the handwork would inhabit it. Knitting represents here women's work made at home while their husbands are at "any" war. Time of knitting is also related to Penelope in the Odyssey. Owing to her husband being at the war, she knitted during the day hours and undid parts of it during the nights to avoid finishing it and being obliged to get married again. The persistence to extend the time is a way to keep herself alive.

I also tried to connect the concept of time with the "unfinished" and "senseless". The scarf of my childhood lost its purpose when I finished it. It was too late. Divinity becomes senseless during a war. Sometimes the "Divine" is like a tale. I don't know if life is a tale too... May be the "intent" to bring Divinity to these days may seem a utopia. Even though, I still believe, in spite of everything, that the utopia of art can provoke changes in the world.

By decision of the curators, tents were not exposed with the real original materials proposed. For this work, the original knitted material was not used, but a photograph of it instead.