Tender

by Jill Magid ; with contr. by Karsten Lund, Claire Bishop and Nikki Columbus, Jasmilah King and Aden Kumler

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Author(s)

Jill Magid, Karsten Lund, Claire Bishop, Nikki Columbus,, Aden Kumler, Jasmilah King

Publication, year

New York : John Wiley & Sons, [2025?]

Scope

176 Pages, illustrated, 28 cm.

ISBN

9780941548847

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Book published on the occasion of 'Jill Magid : Tender : Balance', Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (April 10-May 23, 2021), and the project 'Tender', Creative Time, New York, beginning Septemer 2020. In Creative Time’s most widespread public art commission to date, Jill Magid intercededed in the US' national economy, responding to issues of value in the throes of COVID-19 with her first major U.S. public art project, entitled 'Tender'. Magid disseminated 120,000 2020-issued pennies, the edges of which she engraved with the appropriated phrase, “THE BODY WAS ALREADY SO FRAGILE.” The text evokes both the human body and the body politic—and underscores their interconnection during the coronavirus pandemic. Via a white cash-in-transit truck, these altered coins enter our national economy through purchases at bodegas across all five boroughs of New York City. The number of pennies echoes the $1200 stimulus checks that were issued by the U.S. Treasury as part of The CARES Act, which provided financial relief to individual citizens during the coronavirus. As a voice from the public, the engraved phrase etched onto the edges serves as the antithesis to the propaganda stamped onto the coins’ faces.

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Person as subject

Jill Magid

Keywords

art in public space

Location

Cabinet 5 - 4: Kunstenaars / Artists