Pablo Helguera Archive

Parallel Lives exhibition at Julia Friedman Gallery, 2003

Vidas Paralelas (Parallel Lives), was an attempt to reinvent the form of the biographical exhibition through uncommon associations between  parallel biographies and objects. The project consisted in a peformance piece and an exhibition.  In the exhibition, a collection of objects at a particular site is displayed, however, with the option of five alternative narratives in an acoustiguide (narrated by Fred Wilson) that describe the specifics of five completely different lives: (Giulio Camillo, Florence Foster Jenkins, the Shakers, Ward Jackson, Friedrich Froebel).  The project tried to prove how in the exhibition context objects tend to become receptors, not containers of meaning when they interact with a verbal interpretation, and also seeks to trace visual connections between the lives of five people who could have not been more different in life and events but whos sensibility somehow shared elements in common.

The performance version of this project was presented at the Museum of Modern Art in December of 2003.

Rehearsal of Parallel Lives, Sept. 2003

Fred Wilson recording the acoustiguide for Parallel Lives, San Francisco, 2003