While Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that “every artist was first an amateur,” Serpentine Galleries are encouraging creativity with an ever-expanding set of creative instructions from world-renowned artists, musicians and designers.
The “do it (around the world)” project, presented in partnership with Google Arts & Culture, features DIY instructions written by acclaimed figures from the fields of art, music, poetry, fashion and design.
Among them are Virgil Abloh, Chino Amobi, Arca, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Judy Chicago, Alvaro Barrington, Grace Wales Bonner, Ian Cheng, Matt Copson, Shawanda Corbett, Aurelia Guo, Arthur Jafa, Carla Juaçaba, Kelsey Lu, Oscar Murillo, Jeremy O’Harris and Nisha Ramayya.
Megan Rooney, Rachel Rose, Lorenzo Senni, Solange, FKA twigs, Jan Vorisek, Leilah Weinraub and Hsu Che Yu have also contributed DIY instructions to the project, which started in 1993 under the initiative of Serpentine Galleries Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist.
While only 12 artists participated in the initiative at first, more than 400 designers, painters and musicians have since shared their own creative instructions for people to reproduce at home.
That’s the case of Japanese-American multimedia artist Yoko Ono and American singer and cellist Kelsey Lu, who will respectively teach how to make a wish and do a “tongue prayer.”
Meanwhile, Serbian-American performance artist Marina Abramović guides art enthusiasts through the basics of “Spirit Cooking,” which requires unexpected ingredients such as “13 leaves of green cabbage,” “13,000 grammes of jealousy” and “fresh morning urine.”
More conventionally, American-Italian Postmodern artist and dancer Simone Forti shares her DIY instructions to create a “masque-culotte,” also known as MC.
“While physical mobility is restricted today, art of course can be a way to experience life beyond one’s immediate circumstances. Whether through paint, words, music, food or another medium, artists of all kinds guide their audiences to change their worlds.
‘do it’ is an open invitation for anyone to let art expand their horizons, not just as a passive observer but by doing something themselves,” Obrist said of the ongoing initiative in a statement.