A birthday, a wedding and an following party with young people. This was the 80th anniversary that Marta Minujín celebrated at the Malba. A whole happening, an interactive performance or, also, an immersive work in movement and collective.
Such was this particular birthday that Marta Minujín in turn, she baptized as “her marriage to eternity.” Why? “Because what remains is eternity, I don’t want to go on living following this decade.”, explained with humor but convinced the plastic artist. “I don’t want to live following 90, everything falls out, even your eyes fall out.” Despite this explanation regarding the finiteness of her life, Marta Minujín enthusiastically detailed her exhibition schedule, especially the one she will do in New York in 2023; she also the tour of “La Menesunda” through Europe in 2024, and the reissue of the Parthenon of Books prohibited by the military dictatorship that will be next May 25 to celebrate the forty years of the return to democracy in Argentina.
Marta Minujín chose the Malba for her birthday because it is like her home.
About two hundred guests participated in Marta Minujín’s birthday at the Malba, who were part of the staging. For this reason, everyone accepted the instructions detailed in the invitation: black gala, with black glasses. Given the protagonistthe word “gala” was simply a synonym for “party”. The only thing not black was the light emitted by the cell phones that everyone held throughout the celebration as if it were an accessory attached to the human body. And that was predictable to happen because everyone knew that the surprise that Marta Minujín had prepared would be for Instagramming. So it was.
Around nine at night, at the bus stop in front of Malba, a unit from line 67 parked, with a cast of young people obviously dressed in black and with various masks that are part of the personal collection of the company itself. Marta Minujin. And she appeared in a bombastic pink dress, by the young designer Jorge Rey, which gave her Amalia Amoedo.
From the 67 bus to the walk along a wide red carpet and the entrance of Marta Minujín with her ladies and gentlemen of honor to the Malba and a pedestal where a four-story cake –also black– stood, everything was recorded by hundreds of mobile phones. After the initial greeting, he went to the traditional waltz where these young people with masks distributed themselves to the successive guests These were collectors, plastic artists, discreet patrons and not so much, and even ambassadors who, wrapped in that black environment, turned into a human object that was difficult to identify for their own security personnel.
Later, divided into groups, these young people toured the Malba hall playing instruments, or repeating out loud slogans regarding life, art, time and that are part of the Minujín dictionary. The waltz was followed by other basic wedding traditions: Minujín threw the bouquet –black and a gift from Teresa Bulgheroni–, also something that looked like a veil, and a previous cake cut strip of ribbons that -except one that had a ring-, the rest were basic brooches with an image of the aforementioned Parthenon of Forbidden Books that Minujín made in 1983.
The only menu was slices of dark chocolate and dulce de leche cake, and champagne served in black glasses. For the closing, the guests were moved to the outer esplanade of Malba to “say goodbye to the bride” who, on the way to the same 67 bus that brought her, was repeating in chorus with the cast of her masked the phrase as a mantra: “The model of time is eternity.”
With the guests already retired, Marta Minujín and her masked entourage took the stage of the Malba auditorium to talk with some regarding their present and immediate future. By chance, a member of the Malba team also had a birthday and in a more intimate setting, an following party was organized with young people. That is, part of the Malba staff and the entourage that accompanied Marta Minujín, all in black but without her masks. And following a while, without her wedding dress, she joined in to chat with them, pampering herself by asking for selfies and eating crumb sandwiches. And of course, dancing her way with them to the rhythm of Moto Mami, Rosalía, and trap hits and Argentine urban music.
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