Mail Art
/2
- Mail Art
- 1978
- stamps mounted on cardboard
- 49 × 13 cm
Katalin Ladik’s “Mail Art” stamps, produced between 1977 and 1984 as part of her visual research, adhered to an artistic practice that had been common within the Fluxus movement since the early 1970s. Collages with differing numbers of “artistamps” in various Pop Art-inspired color schemes show glimpses of people in a manner reminiscent of photo booth portraits. Each stamp contains its own speech balloon that makes reference, for example, to colleagues such as Peter Below or Gwendolyn Muschelman, as well as to other trans-disciplinary phenomena such as lunch art. Ladik’s connections with and references to her German colleagues also moved her to use German phrases such as the expression “Post Kunst” to denote this particular phenomenon. Alongside other interventionist practices, Ladik used this artistic method as one of the tropes within her career as visual artist, actress, performer, and poet. W.S.