4’224, 92 cm2 of Degas, 2020

mixed media installation, sound

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, con-
fetti 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

Curator: Nicole Schweizer
Architect: Alisa Semanova
Booklet design: Vlad Steyck
Structures production: Edouard Besson, Timothée Delay, Mickaël Lianza, Peter Matthes Structures seamstresses: Anastasia Markova, Olga Sotskevich

Embroidery: ‘Go Authentic’ studio
Embroiders: Kira Astakhova, Valentina Burochkina, Olya Glagoleva, Evgeniya Ivanchikova, Nataliya Khadzhina, Tatyana Kupriyanova, Sergey Nefedov, Sofiya Pur-tova, Marina Pustovoit, Anastasia Rybina, Anna Safina, Anna Savelyeva, Susanna Savinukhova, Regina Shaikhutdinova, Dilya Tashmukhamedova, Diana Vasilyeva
Calligraphy: Natalia Toropitsyna
Design: Vlad Steyck
Drawing for chiffon: Anzhelika Baryshnikova
Text Audio 1: D. A.
Sound design: Denis Dronov
Voices: Daniel Begon, Doug Bowen, Ian Charlesworth, Loukas Daumer, Cécile Plaige, Nadira Tudor Sound Artist Audio 2: Evgeny Gorbunov
Production: Anzhelika Baryshnikova, Kristina Chernyavskaya, Andrey Efits, Olya Glagoleva, Marina Istomina, Maria Moroz, Alina Sarancha, Veronika Smirnova
Research: Camille de Alencastro, Kristina Chernyavskaya, Andrey Efits, Maria Moroz
Translation: Loukas Daumer, Ben McGarr

Special thanks to 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

Audio 1: https://vimeo.com/439346540/3e647ce9cd Audio 2: https://vimeo.com/399166376/655ec589f5

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