Sleeping in the Gallery

A while back I read about a contemporary Chinese artist Chu Yun, who created what he calls a human sculpture by inducing sleep. The work is titled, "Sleeping beauties in the New Museum," and was featured at New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, "The Generational: Younger Than Jesus” exhibition of emerging artists from April 7 to June 28 in 2009. . He set up a recruitment to look for females between the ages 18 and 40, interested in just sleeping in the gallery for $10/hr. Over 170 women responded to the ad and about 50 were asked to audition at the museum.

Yun also had staged the work in London in 2006 at the Frieze Art Fair, an exhibition that also featured a woman with Down syndrome sitting in a chair. Italian gallery owner who saw Yun's piece bought the rights to reproduce it for £12,000(That's about $18,432 U.S. Dollar's!)

Basically in this "human sculpture" all these women have to do is sleep in the gallery from noon to 6 p.m. as noisy visitors, unrestrained by any sort of barrier or rope, look on and try not to touch them. A sleeping pill was encouraged, but not necessarily required for legal reasons. The women are legitimately sleeping but not pretending. It's not a performance, just pure sleep.

Not bad getting paid $10/hour just to sleep in a gallery!

Links to the articles

http://cjarchives.jrn.columbia.edu/article.asp?subj=arts_culture&course=arts_culture_seminar&id=2426

http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2009/02/sleep-and-be-art-chinese-artist-chu-yun/

Cetonia B.