The Museo de Arte Moderno, snuggled into the charming colonial neighborhood of Buenos Aires, offers artistic excitement for those willing to allow their senses to be aroused. For example, you can “experience” (there is no other apt expression to describe it) Marta Minujín’s “La Menesunda (mixture or confusion).
Only eight persons can enter at a time and no high heals please! Up you go climbing narrow stairs, oh dear, some ancient looking tv screens showing episodes from the 1960’s (The Menesunda was inaugurated in that decade and reconstructed recently in the museum). And then down some steps. Ooops! A man and a woman semi-naked in a comfortable looking double bed! They simile at you. You think of that last time you slept with your couple, or the first time you made love or…the last time.
Oh God! You get stuck in a small round room with a husky looking guy. Your fears are allayed when he smiles timidly at you. So how in the Hell are you going to get out of here? Hmm. You’ve got to find the right combination for a lock. 4567. No! 3448. No! On the fourth try the little door allows you to push into the next phase of the exposition.
Minujin is an artist who has dedicated her life to seeking ruptures to conformist notions, new ways of reading the significance of objects, alternative languages, challenging, provoking a reorganization of thinking patters. The Menesunda was a provocation and its objective was to take people out of the doldrums of everyday life and oblige them to come face to face with everyday objects or situations in such a way as to see them in different ways.
After returning to “reality” you can also explore another exciting exposition, called “La paradoja en el Centro,” which features great argentine artists of the 1960’s who also had a decidedly non-conformist and rupture-like attitude—including some 130 pieces of art by a long list of artists, including Antonio Berni. Some would “destroy” conventional artwork in order to recreate it. Curious. That artistic attitude coincided to a decade in Argentina and the world where rupture, rebellion, revolution and non-conformity were the predominating factors of social and political life. Art is not an island in and of itself. The sensitivities of artists are influenced by the world that surrounds them
