We are grateful to a vigilant DP reader for bringing a recently published book to our attention: Less Is More, by economic anthropologist Jason Hickel.
Excerpts from a recent interview about the book below, interwoven with images from a Guggenheim Bilbao exhibition titled The Body that Carries Me, from the abundant imagination of Ernesto Neto.
From the Guggenheim Bilbao page about Neto’s exhibition:
The artist began working with crochet in 1994 in order to create seamless fabrics and has hand-crocheted circular cells—filled with plastic balls—since then. Neto prefers materials and techniques traditionally linked to women. The artist explains “I love the idea of continuity between man and woman, both in the moral sense and the psychotopological sense. Female and male are just negative and positive. It’s like a sculpture cast—you have the model and the cast. I’m pretty interested in this ambiguity.”
According to Neto, he has wanted to move through the space, hover above the floor or trace a line to climb and float in the air for many years. Life is a Body We are Part of−A vida é um corpo do qual fazemos parte, through which Neto aims to give visitors a slight sense of vertigo, encourages us to think about balance, something which we sometimes take for granted, and to reconsider “the way we move, desire, and fear.”
