Oscar-winner Tilda Swinton sleeps in glass box at museum

TILDA Swinton’s latest performance is putting even her to sleep. The Academy Award-winning actress is sleeping in a fitted glass box at New York’s Museum of Modern Art this month, fully exposing herself to the public during perhaps one of the most intimate human moments.
Museum goers are able to peer in on the Moonrise Kingdom star while standing just feet from her padded glass chamber as she appears to lightly turn in slumber.  Her month-long performance art of public napping titled, The Maybe, is said to run the museum’s entire day - last seen totalling seven hours - but on days randomly chosen and said to be unknown even to the museum’s staff.
‘Museum staff doesn’t know she’s coming until the day of, but she’s here Sunday. She’ll be there the whole day,’ a MoMA employee told Gothamist. Her raised glass box will also move around the museum, rarely if ever appearing in the same location according to the source. On her first day the iconic platinum blonde actress was seen lying fully clothed while wearing jeans, sneakers and a buttoned up shirt.
Various photographs of her display showed her in just a few changing positions, leaving open questions on her full state of consciousness. ‘I feel bad for her. It’s physically demanding. Is she just nocturnal for a month?’ 17-year-old Than Fuirst of Manhattan told the New York Post. ‘I think because I know more about art, I’m not that interested. But maybe it’s good she’s using her celebrity to make people think,’ also said Gaby Shorr, 24, an art appraiser of Brooklyn, to the Post.–MO

A white card adorning a wall near her aquarium labels her like any other piece of artwork in the building, showing the work’s title, artist, dates, and materials used.
In her case it reads: ‘Living artist, glass, steel, mattress, pillow, linen, water, and spectacles.’ This isn’t the first time the world has been offered a very public eye to her sleeping, however.
Swinton’s art installation, The Maybe, first débuted in 1995 at London’s Serpentine Gallery. She later took her one-act to Rome’s Museuo Barraco the following year. MO

ePaper - Nawaiwaqt