Global warming is in the news at the moment, paradoxically because the US Presidential candidates are refusing to talk about it. So Beautiful Crime will. Today we’re revisiting part of Brazilian artist Nele Azevedo’s programme of installations ‘Minimum Monument’, which she began in 2005.
‘Minimum Monument’ was originally intended as a critical reading of monuments in big cities; she carved little ice figures and placed them on steps and around public spaces, giving these tiny ephemeral people centre stage among the heroes those monuments were meant for. Though Azevedo never set out to be an environmental campaigner, because they melted, and because thousands of people saw them, the ice figures were inevitably adopted as symbols of climate change; in September 2009 she collaborated with the World Wildlife Fund to create ‘Melting Men’ on the steps of the Concert Hall in Berlin’s Gendarmenmarkt.
Azevedo sculpted 1000 figures and left them out in 23 degrees C/73F heat. They started to melt within half an hour, and shortly after that there was nothing left of the installation except photographs and a large puddle. This was a small-scale representation of what could happen if the ice caps in Greenland and the Arctic are allowed to melt – photographic evidence that they once existed and, rather than just a puddle, rising sea levels with potentially devastating consequences.
by Jennie Gillions
Images from unurth.com and neleazevedo.com.br
