From Enzo Mari to artist instructions to create a work of art at home

Nicola Pellegrini, artist and heir of the Galleria Milano, together with his historical collaborators Toni Merola and Bianca Trevisan, takes up today, when we are all at home, the idea of Mari’s self-design but referring to works of art. Among the many praiseworthy projects of the artists seen in this period who donated their works to hospitals and research centers, this one stands out for being something else.

In 1974 Enzo Mari presented the exhibition “Proposta per un’autoprogettazione” (Proposal for self-design) at the Galleria Milano, in which he made available to everyone a series of drawings and instructions for making his own furniture – the essential ones, the chair, the table, the wardrobe, the bed. In Mari’s proposal there is a critical attitude towards a world, that of large-scale production, which deprives people of their ability to make and transform. His was an open project that anyone could modify, which became so famous that paradoxically it was produced by a large company, Artek, with the designer complicity. The proposal of self-designing works of art, to which more than 70 artists have adhered, tells something else. In the meantime, giving instructions is an act of generosity, similar to Mari’s one, it means dismantling the aura, putting into play an idea of art that is based on collaboration and sharing thoughts first and then acts. Art is not only one, it has never been one, its categories are multiple, today more and more.

This project brings into play artistic practices that transcend the market, or rather that exist independently of the market even if they sometimes intercept it, plays with the idea of copying and questions what the function of art is. The question is not new, but at this particular moment it takes on another meaning. The project involves those artists, some famous others less famous, who for years have been practicing art forms that question the viewer, involve him in the production of works, or create them together with other artists, some of them have not questioned the authorship of the artist but are available to shared acts and moments like this.

It is an extended group of people who find themselves reflecting on the meaning of their own doing, on what the role of the artist is in the face of the awareness that it will not be like before – thousands of people have already lost their jobs in museums and galleries all over the world – and that it is necessary to redesign our lives starting from a happy act like that of making one’s own work of art. The project can be seen on autoprogettazione.com and on Instagram where everyone can post the work they have created in a dialogue through images with everyone else.

Top: Ottonella Mocellin and Nicola Pellegrini, perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition, 2020