More pieces of artwork at Night Festival go missing
It just doesn’t get any easier for Singaporean artist Karen Mitchell.
Despite her appeal for the return of 114 pieces of her art installation, “Everyday Aspirations”, which went missing after the first weekend of the Singapore Night Festival (23-24 August), another 74 pieces of the artwork have gone missing, bringing the total number of missing pieces to 188.
This means that at the end of the Night Festival last Saturday, only 177 pieces of her artwork remained.
But the artist seemed to have accepted the fact that her artwork was that popular with the visitors and even made a joke about it.
Mitchell told Yahoo Singapore that she didn’t blame anyone for the missing pieces because she “believed that there are many people who really didn't know that they should not remove the texts to bring home with them, after interacting with the piece” as “they may have gone to other venues where some free stuff were given and thought the same situation is happening here”.
And while she “was glad to see many people helping to share the appeal on Facebook”, Mitchell also distanced herself from some of the people who posted angry comments, stating that their comments do not represent her stand.
The artwork was installed along the alley between The Substation and The Peranakan Museum for the festival which was held over the last two weekends at the Bras Basah.Bugis precinct.
According to the artist, the artwork was made up of 365 words of aspirations collected from different people and had the shadows of these words, such as “happiness” and “dreams”, cast onto the wall. This created an over-lapping effect, intending to represent the shared aspirations of everyone.
Mitchell also wrote on her Facebook page that, “Each word played a very important part in this artwork, and they belong to the artist. When any one piece is being removed, it deprives the others to enjoy the experience of interacting with this installation fully.”
She added, “The artwork calls for a ‘shared aspiration’ experience, so all the 365 pieces of the words should be present.”
Related stories:
How stolen Dutch art fooled even Sotheby's expert eyes
Picasso most stolen artist after more works boosted
Dutch art heist trial adjourned in Bucharest
