 |
 |
Berlin Smiles
1997
Museumsakademie, Berlin, Germany
Duct tape, buildings, C-print
The Museumsakademie is a gallery in the Mitte, an area in former East Berlin,
in a neighborhood called the Scheunenviertel, or “shed quarters,”
which was a Jewish neighborhood before World War II. For this piece, I rappelled
off the tops of several buildings surrounding the gallery and taped large
smiles in colored duct tape onto their brick surfaces. The smiles ranged in
size from eight feet to forty feet in width. Inside the gallery I placed a
tongue-in-cheek photograph of me in climbing regalia, prepared to descend
over the wall