![\"Miu](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Miu%20Miu_Art%20Basel%20Paris_30%20Blizzards._by%20Helen%20Marten_Performance%20images%20(10).jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\nWhen developing the characters in Ulysses, James Joyce famously built out their lives with granular precision, conceptualizing even fleeting passersby with complex inner worlds. Their looks, temperaments, memories; the peculiar dynamics of their relationships: each figure was conceived of as an autonomous, fully-embodied individual, caught within turn-of-the-century Dublin\u2019s urban churn. Right now in Paris, Helen Marten\u2019s 30 Blizzards.\u2014the Turner Prize-winning British artist\u2019s very own epic, if you will\u2014has a similar air to it.<\/p>\n
Enter the Palais d\u2019I\u00e9na\u2014a Rationalist marvel of a building that houses the French Economic, Social and Environmental Council\u2014between now and Sunday, and you\u2019ll discover a scene that invites a curious unpacking. A line of five sprawling sculptures (exacting compositions of sofa cushions, scrawled drawings on paper, bent brass sheets, surrealist chessboards, milk cartons, wine-stained corks, pebbles perched on bits of bar) runs through the room, \u201cinterrupted\u201d by a wall-flanked stage. Installed along this procession is a series of screens, intermittently broadcasting videos of surreal, dreamscape vistas and uneasy interior spaces\u2014seemingly shaped by human presence, but absent of it\u2014backdropped by stirring monologues reflecting on themes spanning wide-eyed innocence, carnal desire, and the experience of loss. And then, throughout the space, a total of 30 figures in characterful looks linger. At times they\u2019re dispersed, gazing forlornly out of the windows onto the Eiffel Tower, or surveying the space from staircase platforms next to an industrial track that circles around the room; at others, they convene on the stage and along the central line, interacting through speech and song.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Photo: Courtesy of Miu Miu<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a lot to take in here in Marten\u2019s latest work, a project presented by Miu Miu in its capacity as the official sponsor of Art Basel Paris\u2019s public program. Developed in collaboration with Italian theater and opera director Fabio Cherstich and British composer and electronic music producer Beatrice Dillon, it\u2019s perhaps best approached as a conceptually, narratively, and spatially fragmented opera. It is, after all, centered on a libretto penned by Marten; there are characters, there is song, there is a stage.<\/p>\n
Listening to these characters\u2019 extemporisations, seeing them holding curious props and weaving around the vast installation, you\u2019re struck by a sense of depth and texture that\u2019s tough to place. \u201cThere are 30 forms, each occupying either an archetype, a physical character, a weather character, or an animalistic character,\u201d Marten explains. \u201cThey\u2019re almost like atomized slivers of a world that we recognize, but can\u2019t necessarily geographically locate. There\u2019s something that everyone can relate to.\u201d The Builder, The Fox, The Mother; Magic, The Baker, The Dog: each is its own \u201cblizzard,\u201d a simmering vignette of human experience and temperament. Each also carries their own prop, plucked from gray plastic crates that circulate on the track\u2014whimsical concrete metaphors for their character\u2019s spirit. For The Dentist, black leather gloves; for The Dog, several pink balls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When developing the characters in Ulysses, James Joyce famously built out their lives with granular precision, conceptualizing even…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1475,77,27935,33506,33505],"class_list":{"0":"post-60599","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basel","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-basel","10":"tag-digital_syndication","11":"tag-storytypereporting","12":"tag-textabovecenterfullbleed"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116524190770286549","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}