Little shoe- Maris Merz

Untitled 1968 (little shoe) is a pain of ballerina-like slippers that resemble the structure of natural sea sponges, but are made of synthetic nylon and copper. Recalling a fairytale-like spirit, referencing Cinderella’s glass slipper. Mere’s pair. However, use “poor” materials to represent this one object, which may be related to the artist’s background.

Artist Maris Merz is the only female probagonist associated with the radical Arte povera movement. Often believing that modernisation and mechanisation erase ‘collective memory’, Arte Povera sought to contrast the ‘new’ with the ‘old’, complicating the viewer’s memory of the past. The memory of the past is further complicated.

As the only woman in the group, Maris Merz seems to me to be more adept at her more feminine forms of weaving and knitting. She seems to be expressing her insight into time in a feminine ‘complex’ form, just as women feel when they are compiling, relocating the complex emotions of long, boring, repetitive, fulfilling, in order to express her understanding of time – -is complex rather than simple, interspersed rather than linear. I think it is also in line with the modernisation and mechanisation that Arte Povera does not subscribe to, as she gives voice to the group she is a part of in an artisanal way.

Although I didn’t feel much when I viewed the exhibits until I understood the Arte Povera group and the ideas they were trying to convey, I was impressed by the particular method of weaving and the seemingly slack but resilient material.

I wondered if I might also seek out some of the common materials and combine them – even if it was in some seemingly ordinary way.

I found that even a small object can express the designer’s ideas. Art might not just belong in a gallery; perhaps I could also look more in life, for some ideas and phenome