Marta Minujín

CC’s big fall exhibition is the first European retrospective of the pioneering Argentine Pop artist Marta Minujín (b. 1943). An iconic figure, Minujín is one of the most prominent Latin American Pop and conceptual artists ever. Over the last six decades, her happenings, performances, installations and videos have influenced generations of artists in Latin America, as well as the US and Europe.

Eclectically combining elements of experimental theatre, pop-culture films, television and ads, Minujín creates immersive environments locating the viewer at the centre of social situations confronting us with the seductive power of media images. In sensuous, psychedelic and ephemeral expressions merging humour and political criticism, her art employs Pop art’s signature play with the symbols of consumerism and mass culture.

The centrepiece of the exhibition, La Menesunda (1965), is one of the earliest examples of installation art in history. Minujín’s magnum opus is a labyrinthine installation devised as a fanciful journey through Buenos Aires. Across 11 rooms, the viewer encounters a neon-lit street, a swamp, a beauty salon with a nail technician offering manicures, a bedroom with a slumbering couple and the occasional aroma of fried chicken. Named after the local slang word for chaos, the work is inspired by the buzzing Buenos Aires street life.

The exhibition will feature a wide and varied selection of the artist’s work alongside archive materials that CC was given unique access to through their close collaboration with the artist. Created in partnership with the Museo Moderno in Argentina, Intensify Life will later travel to the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, Tate Liverpool and KANAL-Centre Pompidou in Brussels.