A red fish quietly swims, even if not in an adequate place, in the inside of a blender … unaware of what could happen: this is how Marco Evaristti’s work of art is present at the Tralpholt Art Museum of Kolding in Denmark in 2000. 10 Moulinex full of water laid on a table, all of which contained a red fish. Each blender is connected to the electric power system and it is up to the public to turn on the appliance, become the judges of life and death, and from simple spectator to protagonist. After one hour from the ignition of one of the blenders, the police intervened and arrested the museum director Peter Meyers for animal cruelty, he will be successively discharged.
Evaristti did not want to encourage the audience to kill the fish, he gives them the choice. The first fish’s death leaves a tensed atmosphere; the participation creates three distinct behaviors: the sadist that presses the button, the voyeur that loves watching and the moralist.Hèlena represents a social experiment where he tries to interpretate reality through truth instead of falsity, raising the issue of the power that humans hold on animals. Evaristti traumatizes humans who disregard the environment, paradoxically he commits the same mistake by trying to sensitize.
Who is Marco Evaristti? He was born in 1963 in Santiago del Cile, he’s an artist and has been living in Denmark since the 80’s, obtained a master in architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and he is still working on public and private projects. His prodigies contain materials sourced from nature like diamonds, gold, seeds and blood which generate
a psychological reaction in the audience, initiating intense debates on the limits of the discipline.
He questions the methods and the political claims by reclaiming themes like territorial power, pollution, possessiveness, and the arbitration of death and life.
p h o t o s c o u r t e s y m a r c o e v a r i s t t i
w o r d s e u g e n i a b o o k
t r a n s l a t i o n g i u l i a c a t e n a