In dark times you need comforting art and maybe Charlemagne Palestine's is ideal. The visual artist, musician, composer, and performer was born (Chaim Moshe Tzadik Palestine) in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish immigrant parents. His family came from Odesa, Ukraine.
Palestine is best known for his avant-garde and experimental music compositions and, for decades, he has incorporated bears and other plush toys into his installations and performances.
The multi-coloured soft toys like the ones in his installation "356 CcornUuoOrphanosS", are hand-made by the artist or found and they are usually employed to cover walls and floors or the hard edges of the installation's piano and heating radiators.
The stuffed toys are conceived by the artist as shamanic representations of the soul, but they are also directly linked to the teddy bear's invention in 1902 by an immigrant Jewish couple - Morris and Rose Michtom - in the same Brooklyn neighborhood where Palestine was born.
For the artist the teddy bear invention is an obsession, but also a way to point at childhood memories, at melancholy, longing and loss, and to metaphorically soothe the painful aspects of life through soft objects that provide a sense of comfort and happiness.
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