Instructions to Fold
2024
Wood, brass, twill (90 x 43 x 77 cm) and performance scores
Instructions to Fold is a collapsible bed caught between sleeping surface and shipping crate. The work meditates on sleep as a site of personal and political collapse, drawing on the aesthetics of Campaign Furniture and colonial-era field design to reframe rest as both metaphor and strategy. Closed, it appears as a wooden crate; opened, it unfolds into a bed for one. Activated through a live performance of non-verbal gestures, the piece navigates enclosures, thresholds, and the choreography of control, proposing a poetic redrawing of boundaries between body and structure, rest and resistance.
Performed by Barbara Manzetti, Manif d’art 11, la biennale de Québec, 2024
Instructions to Fold, 2024, at Les forces du sommeil, Manif d’art 11, la biennale de Québec, 2024
Produced with the support of the City of Toronto through Toronto Arts Council
With generous support from the Ontario Arts Council
Special thanks to Mercer Union
Curator: Marie Muracciole
Performance: Barbara Manzetti
Design: Aamna Muzaffar
Fabrication and assistance: Dax Morrison
Graphic design: Omar Al-Zo’bi
Photography: Darren Rigo and Idra Labrie
