Turner Prize-winning artist Helen Marten stages epic opera during Art Basel Paris

"The fashion brand Miu Miu is picking up the pace with its art collaborations this year with its latest exhibition, 30 Blizzards, on the Turner Prize-winning artist Helen Marten, making waves during Art Basel Paris. Free of charge, 30 Blizzards is taking place in the monumental Palais d'Iéna in the French capital, and comprises installation, video and performance in a five-channel work that is activated at intervals by 30 performers."

""The invitation was very broad and very generous, but explicitly [needed] to include a performative element," Marten says. "It sort of defied all of the conventional gallery or museum invitations that I usually receive, and I've never made a performance before so, it very much began with writing. I wrote the libretto, designed to both be built into five monologues for five videos, and sung positions, choral positions, active positions and narrator positions.""

Miu Miu commissioned Helen Marten's 30 Blizzards, a free exhibition staged at the monumental Palais d'Iéna during Art Basel Paris. The project is a five-channel work combining installation, video and live performance activated at intervals by 30 performers. Theatre director Fabio Cherstich staged the production, integrating speech and song to voice archetypal figures such as the child, the carer, the lover, the patient and the widow. Marten expanded her practice with film, sculpture and kinetic elements and wrote a libretto structured into five monologues alongside sung, choral, active and narrator positions. Characters like the Fox, the Mother, the Snail and the Dog Walker circulate and periodically gather on a central stage.

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