It's her place on this Earth: Anna Maria Maiolino speaks up to make sure no one is pushed away from a spot on this clay planet
LOS ANGELES - The performance begins with raw eggs. Dozens of them, scattered in their fragile shells across the sculpture plaza adjacent to the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles.
The audience gathers around. Out of the crowd emerges a petite woman with fine features and white, closely cropped hair. She studiously arranges the onlookers with a series of gestures. Moving them in closer, setting them back, motioning the seated to stand.
Artist Anna Maria Maiolino first staged this performance, "Entrevidas," in 1981 in a cobblestone street in SĂŁo Paulo, Brazil, where she walked barefoot through a minefield of raw eggs with her eyes closed. It came at a charged period in her country's history: toward the end of a brutal military dictatorship that had quelled free speech and resulted in disappearances and other human rights abuses.
"There is the saying 'like walking on eggshells,'" Maiolino says. "In that moment, we didn't know if the country would open up or if it would close itself off."
It was a perfect metaphor for that political time: Each step forward, however
