The Cape Town Art Fair took place at the Cape Town Convention Centre in February 2020 where members of the A4 Arts Foundation team, who opened an art centre located in District 6 Cape Town in 2017, measured each art fair visitors’ height, listing their name and the date of their visit as a height mark on the booth wall.
The A4 Arts Foundation explains that what starts as a blank wall, becomes a collective artwork made by the marks of participants, ‘an iteration of Measuring the Universe by Ondák which was first performed at Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich in 2007, at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in 2009, and in 2011 at the Tate Modern in London.’
In 1966 Roman Ondák was born in Žilina, Slovakia and is celebrated for his work that elevates every day practises and performances of poetic alterations which blur the boundaries between the quotidian and art.
Ondák himself was the first to be measured in Measuring the Universe (2007). Quoted in an interview after being named Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year in 2012 Ondák said ‘I’m trying to use forms which don’t have such a stable position. So, this is a type of work which can have a certain fluidity in terms of appearance.’
A4 Arts Foundation is a free to public, not-for-profit laboratory for the arts of southern Africa. The foundation aims to build an understanding of the arts as a reciprocal resource, a catalyst for innovation, and a site for public participation.
Pictures: A4 Arts Foundation
