The Maybe - Tilda Swinton and Cornelia Parker

The Maybe is an exhibition, which is a collaboration between Tilda Swinton and Cornelia Parker in 1995, first carried out in the Serpentine Gallery in London.

It is a performance piece conceived by Tilda Swinton. She asked Parker to collaborate with her on the project, and to create an installation in which she could sleep. Swinton's original idea was to lie in state as Snow White in a glass coffin, but through the collaboration the idea evolved into her appearing as herself. It focused on the impressions that one has when confronted with the belongings of famous people. All of which were displayed in glass cases.

Parker selected curiosities from various museums, including Turner’s watercolour box, Queen Victoria’s stockings and Sigmund Freud’s blanket, in order to elicit free associations from the beholder.

Swinton herself was on display, asleep in another glass case. Parker’s aim was not merely to question the power of relics, but also to create a mental route that triggers unexpected associations.

A version of the piece was later re-performed in Rome (1996) and then MoMA, New York (2013) without Parker's involvement.

 "it was as if people were beholding an Egyptian mummy come to semi-somnambulant life. "Oh, she twitched!" "She's breathing." "Oh my God! Is that that movie star!?""

I really like this piece, and I feel the fact that Swinton is in the art makes it even more powerful. People are obsessed with celebrities and so when you go to an art gallery and see a celebrity there asleep in a glass case; it is a usually unseen moment. People want to see celebrities do everything, they want to know all about their idols, where they shop, how they exercise what they are reading or wearing. And so to be able to see a celebrity asleep is like an insight into their private life. It offers the public a no boundaries performance of Swinton in a very vulnerable and intimate state. In that glass case there is nowhere for her to hide, she has no option but to show her whole self to the public." It's the opposite of Proust's private cork-lined bedroom to keep the world out. "

Everyone sees them on the television, and that is a glass box isn't it?