HOTTEA: Letting Go August 5, 2012

Since 2005, the artist HOTTEA has been placing his public yarn-and-stencil installations in cities all over the world. For 'letting go,' HOTTEA's most ambitious project to date, the artist worked within the complex architectural details of the MIA's Target Wing rotunda. The result is a physically light but beautiful, space-filling volume of color. Visitors are encouraged to sit or lie on the "grass" and look up into the sun-colored, cascading lengths of yarn. Visitors can also stand in the middle, surrounded by the gradient colors filling the space. Looking at letting go from the second floor, one sees thousands of individual strands, a streaky volume that creates a gently disorienting vibration of color that fills the rotunda's void. During four weeks of construction and installation leading up to the MIA's 2012 Northern Spark event, HOTTEA, MIA staff and volunteers measured, cut, and knotted an estimated 14,000 pieces of colored yarn (almost 400 skeins) to a plastic fence.