The Dry Ice Project

I’m all for replicating art. Why do you think museums encourage you to take as many photos as you want? So that the piece an artist spent so long creating gets distributed freely like it was intended to be shared. Heck, who’s to say this isn’t just a recycled article taken from a pile of other “worn-in” articles.

The Dry Ice Project by Judy Chicago makes use of this recycling in art by replicating the work of none other than her favorite artist: herself. Teaming up with Materials & Applications, Chicago revives her 1968 “Disappearing Environments as Sublime Environment” performance, originally by her, Lloyd Hamrol, and Eric Orr. You may say she just completely copied that other piece, but it’s okay because plagiarism isn’t illegal.

The whole thing required 25 tons of dry ice to be shaped into pyramids and several road flares. The pyramids would sit there for four days melting from the heat of the flares, obviously symbolizing the preciousness of life. The whole sight was captivating as the legacy of the dry ice pyramids lived on as the hazy fog it sublimed into. Flares are cool too.