Joan Menapace

This is a collaborative work involving a number of artists in the international mail art community. The suitcase, as receptacle, contains original, individually handmade postcards and envelopes, which have been mailed to me expressly for use in this project. Instead of the suitcase actually traveling with one person elsewhere, the work of artists from around the world have traveled here to Philadelphia. Instead of one artist’s hand producing the work, the suitcase will celebrate not only the hand who creates the mail art object but also the hand, or many hands, that touch each work as it makes it’s journey here. People communicate instantly and the traces evaporate instantly. In using the postal delivery system to communicate, ideas can travel in lasting time, leaving marks and images made and also remembered by those along the way.

Bio

A large aspect of my work involves collaboration and/or audience participation. At Tyler, my late sculptural work took the form of interactive games, requiring audience participation to appreciate the piece. For the past three years I have been in the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, doing street performance involving passersby painting on myself, a living room set up and lastly on large doll figures. I believe that art need not only be contemplative, or confrontational, but that humans benefit in intrinsic ways by actual hands-on participation with the piece.

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