Fairs
United Kingdom
Turned back at the border
Pierre Huyghe’s hermit crab kept Stateside by customs
By Anny Shaw. From Frieze daily edition
Published online: 12 October 2011
Huyghe’s “Recollection”, 2011
london. A giant hermit crab destined to be the “star” performer in Pierre Huyghe’s live ecosystem installation, Recollection, 2011, part of Frieze Projects (P6), has been stopped by US customs and transferred to an aquarium in New York after it was found to be inhabiting the shell of an endangered species.
Sarah McCrory, the curator of Frieze Projects, who sourced a replacement from Florida via the Netherlands, says: “It has gone to a good home.” But Huyghe says the shell was wrongly identified: “Customs compared it with a photograph and made a mistake.”
He has crafted a mini replica of Brancusi’s bronze Sleeping Muse, 1909-10, for the replacement. “The crab is living in a work of art,” McCrory says.
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