Marta Minujin

Over the past sixty years, Marta Minujín has developed happenings, performances, installations, and video works that have influenced generations of contemporary artists in Latin America and beyond. Combining elements of experimental theater, film and television, advertising, and sculpture, Minujín creates total environments that place viewers at the center of social situations and confront them with the seductiveness of media images and celebrity culture. Notably, she has often refused to create lasting objects, opting instead to develop her work in opposition to institutional structures, simultaneously crafting monumental yet fragile works that challenge art conventions and testify to her unwavering commitment to radical artistic forms and the artifices of popular culture. Minujín's ability to inspire awe, joy, and surprise has firmly established her as a celebrated pioneer of Latin American conceptual art.Minujín studied at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes Manuel Belgrano and the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón Buenos Aires. She carried out her first performance, La destrucción (The Destruction), in Paris in 1963. Returning to Buenos Aires in 1964, she was awarded the Premio Nacional Instituto Torcuato Di Tella for the work ¡Revuélquese y viva! (Wallow around and live!), her first interactive installation. Minujín received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1966. During the 1970s, she lived between the United States and Argentina, exhibiting her work in major institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1973), and Centro de Arte y Comunicación, Buenos Aires (1975, 1976). A retrospective of Minujín’s work was presented at the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires in 2010, and her work has been included in documenta 14, Kassel (2017), and in exhibitions at Tate Modern, London (2015); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2015); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2001); and elsewhere. Her first survey exhibition in the United States, Arte! Arte! Arte!, will be on view from November 17, 2023 through March 31, 2024 at the Jewish Museum.