Experience Cinthia Marcelle's Thought-Provoking 'Dust Never Sleeps' Exhibition

This exhibition by Cinthia Marcelle transformed the Graphic Cabinet of the Secession into a space covered in black soot, with lighter contours emerging from the density of the material. It explores themes of decay and the poetic transformation of everyday actions, referencing Walter Benjamin's concept of history as an unstoppable process of decay.

Cinthia Marcelle, known for staging situations and performative actions in public spaces to transform everyday acts into poetic events, uses video and photography as documentation tools. She frequently addresses ruins as an allegory for history beyond conventional notions of beauty, drawing parallels to Walter Benjamin's concept of history as a process of perpetual decay. In her installation 'Dust Never Sleeps' (2014), Marcelle covered the floor, walls, ceiling, windows, and doors of the Secession's Graphic Cabinet with black soot, creating a space that evoked a sense of abandonment. Denser accumulations of material formed a spatial drawing akin to a photographic negative, with only a narrow, lighter-colored strip accessible to visitors. This deliberate spatial confinement and the ephemeral nature of the dust installation generated palpable tension, emphasizing a separation between an 'outside' and an 'inside' within the exhibition space. The artist's approach to decay is further exemplified in her installation 'À margem dos dias' in São Paulo, which opened around the same time. In this work, Marcelle adopted an inverse strategy: instead of adding material, she removed two decades of accumulated deposits along the walls of a disused hospital, creating a clean strip for visitors. In contrast, visitors were permitted to enter only the dusty central area of the space, highlighting the materialization of time through layers of dust and dirt as a core thematic element.

Information regarding tickets can be found via a provided link to an external ticketing platform, suggesting that admission may require purchase or booking. Specific details about exhibition entry versus general museum admission are not explicitly stated on this page. The page also indicates that the venue is open daily except Mondays, from 10 AM to 6 PM, which is general opening hours information for the Secession building rather than specific exhibition ticketing details.