4’224, 92 cm2 of Degas

Mixed media installation, sound


2020









The title refers to the mysterious disappearance of 4,224,92 cm2 from a pastel by Edgar Degas in the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, collection at some point between the inventory drawn up after the artist’s death and the work’s acquisition by the museum in 1936.
                    
The installation is almost entirely made up of fabric. Soft-picture rails, hand-embroidered with stories both real and fictional of how artworks came to be in various museum collections, confetti on which details of paintings can be identified, and bolts of printed cloth on which the rough lines of the now missing parts of the Degas pastel can be made out, all lead to a large board, hung horizontally like an imaginary ceiling, with several openings that one is invited to poke one’s head through to listen to a sound that simultaneously evokes water, fire, termites and various other pests. In another part of the space, stories about the value of art, about museum storage and that which is kept, collected and yet hidden, are broadcast by loudspeakers. Like the sculptural elements of the installation, the narratives populate the space and transform the relationship with time and with that which is known, imagined, witnessed, or felt.

— Nicole Schweizer











Team


Chefs

Performers

Menu design


Daria Corso, Vito D’Anna, Alessandro Giglio

Mario Barnaba, Alice Canzonieri, Martina Cassenti, Maziar Firouzi, Claudia Di Gangi, Quinzio Quiescenti,

Martina Mott
Special thanks:
Dina Akhmadeeva, Camille de Alencastro, Timothée Delay, Sébastien Dizerens,
Léa Gentil, John Lavell, Catherine Lepdor, Camille Lévêque-Claudet, Alexandre von der Mühll, Uzma Z. Rizvi, Vincent van Velsen, Ellina Vaskova, VISIONÄR buro

Commissioned by Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne
Courtesy of Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne
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