Cornelia
Parker

The works of British artist Cornelia Parker always tell a story, a story that may be poetic, anecdotal or legendary. Memory and the memories that can be transmitted by material are two of her interests. She sees every object as having its own artistic potential, which she seeks to bring out. Working in a variety of media, she has taken photographs of objects owned by such famous figures as Sigmund Freud, Einstein and the Brontë Sisters, or exhibited the unassuming relics of the past presences of figures both famous and obscure. Parker also works with the idea of destruction. She once got British soldiers to blow up a garden shed and then hung the fragments, lit up from within, to capture that ephemeral moment of explosion. She also helps design pyrotechnic events. The power of gravity and its suspension is evident in several other works, such as the ones in which objects crushed by a steamroller are hung enigmatically in the exhibitions, or a circle of brass instruments form a silent orchestra. Parker has notably collaborated on a performance with the famous actress Tilda Swinton, who lay sleeping in a vitrine surrounded by objects that belonged to figures such as Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens.