>> I was struck today by a grainy newspaper image of the French artist Christian Boltanski's new awe-inspiring installation 'Personnes' as part of the Monumenta series held in the Grand Palais in Paris. Without even reading the article, I actually wanted to cry a little at how the clothes arranged in uniform remembrance grave formations looked like the clothes of the dead; wrinkled, lived in, maybe even smelling a little. It's weird that in a jumble sale context, this would ostensibly be an opportunity to rifle through and see what gems can dig out but in these uniform guarded squares and a gigantic landfill pile in the middle, I couldn't imagine wanting to touch the clothes at all. I'm ill-equipped to analyse Boltanski's work but I do thank him for using clothes as an artefact of memory, of sentimentality and as things that could be intrinsic parts of a person.
I'm simultaneously bemused and slightly saddened though that the next time I'm in the Grand Palais in March, all of this will be gone and in its place will be whatever runway setup Chanel decides upon for their A/W 10-11 show...
(Images from a selection on Flickr)
