A provocative video about narcissism is coming to a Manhattan mall this week, courtesy of the controversial artist Marilyn Minter. Aptly titled, “I’m Not Much But I’m All I Think About,” the slow-motion film will play on the walls of the Oculus at Westfield World Trade Center starting January 11.
“Narcissism is becoming a real subject lately,” Minter said in an interview. “It’s got paragraphs behind it now for the first time.” The film first appeared at a Salon 94 Bowery art show in 2011. At the Westfield shopping center this month, 19 enormous video screens (including one that’s four stories tall) will appear throughout Westfield’s underground concourse and public spaces, all playing Minter’s film: a gurgling rose-colored sea filled with aluminum letters that spell out M-E. “All creatives are very self-involved,” she joked. “You have to be to keep going, you know?”
Minter is best known for her sex-positive artwork that was misunderstood as un-feminist in the ’90s. Her latest project will be on view until February 8. The exhibition is a collaboration between Westfield and the Art Production Fund, part of an initiative led by Isolde Brielmaier (Westfield’s national executive director of arts, culture, and community) to bring public art to World Trade Center. The Art Production Fund’s executive director, Casey Fremont, said visitors to the shopping center this winter will be pleasantly surprised by the exhibit’s look. “Marilyn’s video moves and feels quite different from the typical kind of bright, flashy advertisements,” she said. “Hopefully it will get people’s attention.”
