In a symbolic and powerful way, an Argentinian artist named Marta Minujín used more than 100,000 copies of books that have been banned throughout the world to recreate Greece’s international symbol of freedom and democracy, the Parthenon.
According to the artist, it symbolizes the resistance to political repression and what makes it even more powerful is the location. Minujín’s work stands on a historic site where the Nazis burned some 2,000 books in 1933 by Jewish or Marxist writers as part of a campaign of censorship.
The Parthenon of Books in Kassel, Germany is part of the Documenta 14 Art Festival. With the help of students from Kassel University, Minujín identified titles of various books that had been banned in different countries around the world.
He constructed the full-size replica of the iconic Greek temple from those books, plastic sheeting, and steel.
The work has exactly the same dimensions as the Parthenon – 70 meters (230 feet) in length, 31 meters in breadth and 10 meters in height.
1 comment
Wow