In 1983, Marta Minujín had erected Partenón de libros prohibidos in Buenos Aires: a sculpture in which 20,000 volumes were piled up, banned by the military dictatorship. On the occasion of 14th edition of Documenta in 2017, entitled Learning from Athens, the Argentinean reconstructed the monument in a dialogue between two ideas of Europe. Thanks to crowdfunding, 100,000 books were collected, then assembled into Parthenon of Books. This remake was placed in the Friedrichsplatz in Kassel, where thousands of ‘degenerate’ texts were burned by the Nazis in 1933.
The monument was created with the help of students from the local university, who helped Minujín draw up a list of at least 170 titles that have been banned, censored and burned throughout the history of civilisation.
It is an epoch-breaking but not eternal work: since the closing day of ‘Documenta’ on 17 September 2017, anyone has been able to pick up a volume, saving it from the dismantling of the installation. A political but not ideological work, condemning all censorship of thought, Marta Minujin's paper temple had a symbolic value that went beyond conceptual art and intellectual provocation.
