A site-specific installation made of cardboard, “Inside the Para-Site” is a large cardboard façade built in an abstracted emulation of the neoclassical style common to major museums and erected inside the Fuzinato’s Berlin apartment. The sculpture—which was later partially exhibited at Berlin University of Arts—takes over the whole space, making movement within it difficult. Part of a theoretical and practical research project surrounding the management and organisation of museums, the work explores the often oppressive and far-reaching influence of constructed institutional narratives and how individuals navigate its imposing structures.
“Inside the Para-Site” occupied the artist’s own home over a two-month period, during which time it became a communal space for convening and engaging in discussion and discourse—thinking, talking, writing—around the representational policies of museums. Its aim was to conceive of and develop alternative areas of knowledge production that would address common shortcomings of major institutions. These include a lack of representation across race, sexual orientation, religion, and gender, as well as the ongoing influence of established colonial imperatives and neoliberal management. In representing well-known issues with no apparent consensus on how they could be resolved, the sculpture stood as an uncomfortable and imposing monument to these complex problems that were physically experienced by all who entered the space. And yet, it was slowly but surely destroyed by the bodies that inhabited and endured its imposition in the process of the discussions and openings that took place there in the meantime.
Photo credits: Sophia Helena Galambach, Dario Fuzinato
Project page: http://museumsite.tumblr.com/About