Art & Art History
Instructions for Beetroots / Dear Martha Performance
Gallery 400
400 s. Peoria St.
Dear Martha presents a series of letters performed in the archive, exhibiting MFA artist Eli Mendel plays annotated dance cards with his father through time, creates a collaborative roots, dreams, and death Venn diagram, and stamps his legs and his letters.
Mendel will follow the lines written in a 75-year-old letter, cycle 23km, dig up a beetroot, fall down five times, cycle 23km more, and create a live erasure poem with the vegetable.
Mendel will perform instructions for the archive, responding to what IT is. Clean it, Discover it, Understand it, Translate it (fail), Archive it, Dream it, Perform it, Kiss it (frequently), Love it, Hate it, Destroy it (fail), Mourn it, Forget it.
ABOUT
Elias Mendel (b. 1998, London, UK) is an interdisciplinary artist, archivist, and educator who makes videos, sculptures, drawings, writings, and performances. He is interested in the intersection between memory, roots, and the abyss, and examining legibility, language, and diaspora. Mendel draws from a vast family history and archive.