Swept Away: Dust, Ashes, and Dirt in Contemporary Art and Design

Phoebe Cummings, Flora, 2010

There’s a show up at New York City’s underappreciated Museum of Art and Design. Swept Away: Dust, Ashes, and Dirt in Contemporary Art and Design includes “works that deal with issues such as the ephemeral nature of art and life, the quality and content of memory, issues of loss and disintegration, and the detritus of human existence…. In some instances, visitors will actually get to sweep away the installations by walking through and touching them, participating in the ephemeral nature of these artists’ output.”

The show runs until August 12, 2012. Plenty of time to see it, though some installations are being swept away as we speak…

Participating artists include:

Phoebe Cummings (U.K.), Dirt / Paul Hazelton (U.K.), Dust / Kim Abeles (U.S.), Smog / Igor Eskinja (Slovenia, U.K.), Dust / Lee Stoetzel (U.S.), Sand / Alexandre Orion (Brazil), Automobile soot graffiti (video) / James Croak (U.S.), Dirt / Elvira Wersche (Netherlands/Germany), Sand / Catherine Bertola (U.K.), Dust / Jim Dingilian (U.S.), Smoke / Studio Glithero (U.K.), Fire and Smoke / Su Zhiguang (China), Urban Soot / Andy Goldsworthy (U.K.) sand photographs / Stephen Livingstone (U.K.), Smoke and Ashes / Cai Guo-Qiang (China/U.S.), Gunpowder ash / Julie Parker (U.K.), Lint / Antonio Riello (Italy), Burned books, Sand / Cui Fei (China)