An artist-collector duo constructs a ‘performance art’ experiment

A recent art project involved D.C. collector-patron Philippa Hughes, as the US media widely reported. As part of it, she hosted an artist in her apartment.

The visit, termed as an art performance, was aimed at testing the set boundaries of the formal artist-collector relationship. Pittsburgh-based Agnes Bolt is a Carnegie Mellon University graduate student. She experienced a different new mood and setting at the collector’s 14th Street NW condo. Recounting the early experience, she was quoted as saying: “It has been touch awkward. Hughes remarked: “I didn’t really think it through while agreeing to it.”

Incidentally, Hughes did not pay anything for the art performance, though a contract spelt out the terms of the ‘work’. She was to make ‘nourishing’ meals for the artist twice each day and joined her in bonding exercises. Hughes was supposed to communicate messages not related to art via paper notes, with help of a two-way message portal, which intersected the bubble.

Almost by design, this particular stay was not perhaps intended to pass well. Her piece of work is an endurance performance, which fails or clicks on Philippa Hughes’s ability to endure it. The 32-year-old, upcoming artist set up shop, so to say, in her patron’s 1,000-square-foot condo. Though she stayed in her home, she spent her time there separately.

A transparent polycarbonate enclosure (a bubble of sorts) took up most of the central living space was. Inside it, the artist sequestered herself - a rule that Bolt had imposed: not leaving her bubble, barring by way of dog-agility tunnels, basically structured, slightly expandable tubes.

The artist used them for extending her private zone to include Philippa Hughes’s bathroom or balcony. Visitors were required to crawl through them for seeking face time with Bolt. The performance apparently achieved its desired result. Hughes remarked at one point: “Each day felt like a week.” By then, both the artist and collector had reached a better mutual understanding.

“I hope there is a way that she can take the material gathered over the past week and turn it into something that is universally relevant,” Hughes stated. “It wasn’t really about Agnes and Philippa.” “My primary interest is (having) the experience,” Bolt concluded. “It’s really a piece for one!”