Wondering what to do with your old books? It can be hard to get much (or any) cash from your local second-hand bookshop these days. If you’re a dab hand with scissors and a glue-gun, you might like to try making them into art.
Surely this only took a few rainy-day afternoons, right?
Spanish artist Alicia Martin’s Biografias project uses 5,000 books in each of her three site-specific sculptures, based in historic buildings in Madrid. The current installation is at Casa de America.
Each of the large-scaled books columns is held securely by an intricate metal and mesh framework inside. The metal skeleton gives the voluminous sculptures shape and holds each and every page in place, although the pieces appear to be flowing downward.
‘By constructing the curving towers with a rather free and disheveled exterior, while maintaining a sturdy core, the books’ loose pages are free to blow and rustle in the wind, allowing the piece to be further animated,‘ writes My Modern Met.
You can watch the installation in action in the video below.
Does it symbolise the death of the print book, or its fetishisation? Or is it simply a really cool piece of art?