Benczúr, Emese: Should I live to be a hundred (1997)

Benczúr was invited to create Should I Live To Be A Hundred for Manifesta 2, held in Luxemburg in 1997. She calculated the number of days she would live until her one hundredth birthday, and ordered the exact number of clothing labels with the caption “Day by Day”. These labels are rolled up, waiting for her to complete them by manually embroidering the caption “I think about the future” next to the mechanically created text. The artist inverted Marcel Duchamps’s practice of bringing mass-produced objects into the exhibition space. In this artwork, she combines industrial serial production with handicraft, presenting the products of the past while constantly thinking about the future, and minimal intervention with the monumentality of the installation. From the 1970’s, feminist artists started to use techniques previously specific to dressmaking both to earn more appreciation for female work and to accommodate techniques unused by men. Benczúr’s works raise the issues of gender-related differences in artistic work, and aim at exploring new territories of art at the same time.

Katalin Timár