\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tHelen Marten<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBenedict Brink\/Courtesy of Miu Miu<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tThe exhibit has been a few months in the making, with early contacts between Prada and the Turner Prize-winning Marten occurring last March. However, the artist \u2014 who has always been fascinated by both the aesthetics and political qualities of fashion \u2014 had been following the designer\u2019s work for quite some time.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThere are so few sorts of visionaries whose generosity, whose intellectual content, whose championing of female, marginalized voices, is quite so prolific and generous as Mrs. Prada\u2019s [and that] straddles both the technological progress, the social mobility of fashion and clothing across something that collaborates in a deeply intellectual way with arts or literature or film,\u201d continued Marten.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201c30 Blizzards.\u201d is a multilayered and multipronged, non-linear work that is not necessarily intended for straightforward deciphering. It reflects Marten\u2019s intention to trigger different emotions and interpretations in the audience, as well as reflect the unique life experiences of each individual.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThis entire project has so many different overlapping facets, so many sort of material conditions, so many existential emotions, and so many different narrative archetypes that are all deeply sort of interlocked and contingent on one another,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \n\tThe exhibit\u2019s title may suggest Marten is addressing the current social, cultural and geopolitical turmoil, when in fact it\u2019s a reflection of the frenzied and multifaceted emotional dimension of human beings.<\/p>\n \n\tBlizzard, she said, is a graphically and onomatopoeically pleasant word, but it also references a weather condition that is \u201ctemperamental. It is a word that is full of portent, full of mystery, full of possibility for, you know, darkness in a way, but most fundamentally, the word blizzard is a metaphorical reference to human beings and their sort of changeable emotional temperament,\u201d Marten explained.<\/p>\n \n\tThe number 30 is not only an overt reference to the 30 performers in the exhibit, but also a key to unlocking the show\u2019s underlying message. \u201cIt\u2019s the interpretive tool for the wider logic of the project,\u201d the artist explained. In numerology, 30 symbolizes infinity and the exhibition is conceived as a continuum, to be experienced as a whole but also in tidbits, without losing the overall messaging, she said.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tStills from the video installations in Helen Marten\u2019s \u201c30 Blizzards.\u201d exhibit at Art Basel Paris Public Program.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Miu Miu<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\t\u201c30 Blizzards.\u201d marks the first show where Marten is exploring performance, a two-hour choreography of bodies, conceived in collaboration with theater and opera director Fabio Cherstich and composer Beatrice Dillon.<\/p>\n \n\tThe exhibition is physically structured around five diptychs, each on a podium, juxtaposing five sculptures and five video installations. The five podiums are scattered in linear succession across the Palais d\u2019I\u00e9na, the headquarters of France\u2019s Economic, Social and Environmental Council and the usual venue of Miu Miu runway shows. The space is looped by a moving industrial distribution track loaded with boxes, books, speakers and clothing, among other objects.<\/p>\n \n\tEach video-sculpture pair references a chronological moment of life, from childhood to adulthood and older age, as well as the archetypal experiences connected to each, including parenthood, sexuality, interiority, and loss.<\/p>\n \n\tWhile the sculptures are agglomerates and amalgams of ordinary objects, the videos are short vignettes, narrative monologues from the point of view of the timeline\u2019s protagonists: the child, the parent, the lover, the patient, the widow. They are played one at a time, voiced by women, but Marten said the show is not confined to the exploration of the feminine world.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019m not using female experience in this sense of like a binary position, but more like a metaphor. This project is about human beings,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe libretto is written almost like an amorphous strip, so that you can experience its full arc, but you\u2019re also invited to move fluidly within it. So, you can enter at the beginning. You can enter at the end; you can enter just as a crescendo is happening. And no matter where you enter, you still feel like you\u2019re experiencing a full narrative of the piece,\u201d Marten said.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThere\u2019s never a sort of ending point, you know, it\u2019s one kind of continual cycle of information.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tStills from the video installations in Helen Marten\u2019s \u201c30 Blizzards.\u201d exhibit at Art Basel Paris Public Program.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Miu Miu<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tThe videos\u2019 voiceovers are overlapped by what the artist called a \u201cflock\u201d of 30 performers \u2014 a diverse group, \u201cvery fluid and nonlinear,\u201d she said, that includes men, women, non-binary characters, people from all walks of life \u2014 moving freely through the space, gesturing, voicing or singing refrains, individually or in chorus. Each performer is assigned a character or trope. Some embody weather phenomena, others animals or celestial moods.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe are creating a city in a way or the idea of a town, whereby each of the fundamental components of that city are represented by one of the 30 characters,\u201d Marten explained. \u201cThere are archetypes in the sense of characters that you might recognize from a more literary context, like the mother or the baker or the delivery driver.\u00a0 And then there are more metaphysical qualities, like magic, and of course, there\u2019s weatherscapes like snow or rain.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe exhibition has to be experienced without seeking a closed-loop narrative to walk home with.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt\u2019s this sort of continual arc of of experience, really, so that there isn\u2019t an explicit story, it\u2019s more a sort of set of observations, I would say, collective watching in a way, to sort of understand the material, atomic qualities of the world around us,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \n\tA graduate of London\u2019s Central Saint Martins and Oxford University, the Macclesfield, U.K.-born Marten has built a prolific art career across multiple media, spanning sculpture, painting, drawing, video and writing, which landed her collective exhibits at major cultural institutions worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Tate in London.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI think fundamentally, the things I return to over and over again are\u2026 text and image, the two ever fundamental building blocks of where I start with my work,\u201d Marten said. \u201cSemiotic expression, or realms of sort of deviancy that exist outside of classic binary normative language, is something that I\u2019m really interested in,\u201d the artist noted.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tStills from the video installations in Helen Marten\u2019s \u201c30 Blizzards.\u201d exhibit at Art Basel Paris Public Program.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Miu Miu<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tThe exhibit will be on show between Oct. 22 and 26 at the Palais d\u2019I\u00e9na, with two talks planned for the first day.<\/p>\n \n\tFor its inaugural participation at the Art Basel Paris Public Program last year, Miu Miu unveiled \u201cTales & Tellers,\u201d billed as an intersection between \u201cfashion, cinema and art\u201d conceived by interdisciplinary artist Goshka Macuga and convened by Elvira Dyangani Ose, director of MACBA, the Museu d\u2019Art Contemporani de Barcelona.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MILAN \u2014 Miuccia Prada\u2019s interest in women\u2019s, and more generally, humans\u2019 lives and condition has been integral to her work at the Prada and Miu Miu brands for decades. An art enthusiast and patron of the arts with her husband Patrizio Bartelli through their Fondazione Prada art institution, the Italian designer has increasingly leveraged Miu Miu as a platform for in-depth cultural exploration. As the official partner of Art Basel Paris\u2019 Public Program for the second year, the brand will bring \u201c30 Blizzards.,\u201d a new project by British artist Helen Marten, to the modern and contemporary art show. The exhibit \u2014 a combination of sculpture, video installations, libretto and movement, all of which contribute to shaping the message equally \u2014 champions \u201cradical human optimism,\u201d Marten told WWD. \u201cI think the fundamental implication of making art, and specially making art that asserts itself to require an audience is embracing a voice of explicit care, or a voice that sort of speaks suggestively to empowerment through dialog and conversation,\u201d she said. \u201cWe do live in an incredibly violent and polarized world. There\u2019s absolutely no denying that it\u2019s very difficult, and the wonder of artmaking is, hopefully, that it engenders a space where radical and important conversation can be had about what that means and how to act with an ethical voice, or within an atmosphere of care. I think care is a very important word, and we\u2019re very afraid often to use it,\u201d she said. Helen Marten Benedict Brink\/Courtesy of Miu Miu The exhibit has been a few months in the making, with early contacts between Prada and the Turner Prize-winning Marten occurring last March. However, the artist \u2014 who has always been fascinated by both the aesthetics and political qualities of fashion \u2014 had been following the designer\u2019s work for quite some time. \u201cThere are so few sorts of visionaries whose generosity, whose intellectual content, whose championing of female, marginalized voices, is quite so prolific and g…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5999"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Helen](\"https:\/\/wwd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Helen-Marten_credit-Benedict-Brink.jpeg?w=199\")
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