Going Out Guide
Five weird and wonderful works at the (e)merge art fair
By Maura Judkis October 4, 2013
There's always a spectacle at the (e)merge art fair, which opened last night and continues throughout the weekend. The international art fair turns the Capitol Skyline Hotel's guest rooms into galleries, and encourages performance artists to use the pool deck as their stage. You can read more about the fair's history in Michael O'Sullivan's excellent preview. View Photo Gallery —Every year since 2011, the (e)merge art fair has transformed the Capitol Skyline Hotel into a stage for strange and wondrous contemporary art. Here’s a look at scenes from previous years, and a preview of the 2013 fair. So what can you expect from this year's (e)merge? Art about childhood, campaigning, and the Constitution are a few examples, here. 1. Looks like a Lady Gaga costume, but it's actually a performance by Armando Lopez Bircann of Animals & Fire, a performance art group in D.C. His work addresses the activation of performative sculpture. 2. Hillary's 2016 campaign has already begin, thanks to a jump-start from artist Camden Place, who will be passing out Clinton campaign materials all week. Hillary's faux-campaign slogan? "Bringing Us Closer." 3. Andrew Wodzianski's “Self-Portrait as Jack Torrance” is a reenactment of the famous scene from "The Shining" in which Jack Nicholson types "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," in the hotel's lobby. He'll be typing the phrase for every hour that the fair is in session. He never looks up from the typewriter.
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4. The shutdown adds extra meaning to Borjana Ventzislavova's "15 Minute Constitutional Bed Stories," in which guests are asked to lie in bed and read the U.S. Constitution, while others can watch and listen on a TV upstairs. The piece asks visitors to compare the relevance of our most important document to a bedtime story. 5. In the Aureus Contemporary room, Peter Cole's whimsical tchotchke sculptures are a commentary about childhood nostalgia and advertising.
Correction: An earlier version of this post referred to Borjana Ventzislavova's work as "15 Minute Conditional Bed Stories."
Maura Judkis covers culture, food, and the arts. Follow @MauraJudkis
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