Cobble stone ground into a rotated diamond shape, intervention in public space, Siebenbrunnenplatz, Vienna AT
In February of 2023 I had extracted a cobblestone from a public square in the district of Margareten, close to where I lived. In my studio I ground it into a diamond shape and, four months later, put it back. When I was about to be done, a concerned neighbor approached me. I had noticed her watching me. She said she didn‘t understand what I was doing and that she was worried about the children that might come to play in this square. They might hit their heads on it while playing. Or an elderly person might trip over it and fall and break all their bones. She seemed agitated. I told her she was right and that I could see its potential threat to the public wellbeing but that I thought it was rather small. I wondered if she was equally as worried about the sharp corners of that bench she had been sitting on? The curbstone? The pointy metal fencing surrounding the square and the flowerbeds or the spikes on the low windowsills of the surrounding buildings? She didn‘t care about them. But this was against the rules.
The work Skin Fade is closely connected to the work Transplant. They incorporate two cobble stones, like siblings, received by the artist in Vienna, Austria in the same Summer and since then regarded as her treasures.