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Europe
Mark Wallinger
British Sculptor and Performance Artist
Guest of the Artists-in-Berlin Programme 2001
"I see Germany as the land of bears. I wanted to
be a bear there just once"
At the age of 10, Mark Wallinger was watching a German
fairytale on British TV. The film showed how a prince
was transformed into a bear. And that had a lasting effect
on Wallinger's image of Berlin. The British artist came
to the "land of the bears" in 2001, as a guest
of the DAAD's Artists-in-Berlin programme. By that time,
he was already over 40 years of age and had become one
of Britain's foremost avant-garde artists with his sculptures
and installations. In Berlin, he not only found the bear
as the city's tourist marketing trademark – he also
discovered the New National Gallery, built by architect
Mies van der Rohe, whom he much admired. It took three
years before the museum was able to place the, now emptied,
ground floor at the British artist's disposal for a performance
and so Mark Wallinger was able to fulfil one of his dreams:
seven nights long that winter, the artist walked up and
down the dimly lit museum hall, all on his own and wearing
a remarkably realistic bear's costume, marvelled at by
the partly frightened and partly amused Berliners who
watched him through the large glass window.
But Mark Wallinger would not be known as the politically
committed and intellectual artist that he is if he had
not also tied some historical-political associations into
his action. One of these: as a divided city, Berlin was
a place of spies and secret agents. And like these "Sleepers"
– also the name chosen for the performance –
Wallinger, a Briton in a foreign city, hid himself, well
disguised in the very German bear's costume.
Born in Chigwell in 1959, the artist, who today lives
in London, repeatedly deals with aspects of social and
cultural history in his works, which include paintings,
photography and video art, and inquires into the identity
of his nation. He shocked his compatriots in 1999 with
a sculpture set in the historic heart of London. On Trafalgar
Square, directly adjacent to Nelson's Column and other
imperial symbols, Wallinger erected his sculpture "Ecce
Homo" – a naturalistic, life-sized figure of
Christ, made of white marble dust and resin, wearing nothing
but a loincloth and with his hands tied behind his back.
The crown on the shaven bald head was not made of thorns,
but rather of barbed wire. And so the Messiah had become
a political prisoner, Trafalgar Square had become a venue
for the tribunal. During an – eventually inconclusive
– art competition, the work for seven months simultaneously
attracted and provoked the many people who passed by this
busy place. |
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