The London Mastaba Scarves

In 2018 Serpentine presented a major exhibition of Christo’s work which drew on their use of barrels to create artworks. This presentation included The London Mastaba, a temporary floating structure on Serpentine Lake. Collaborating with the label Jane Carr, the pair devised this scarf edition in honour of this extensive exhibition.

The London Mastaba was Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s first outdoor, public work in the UK and last public project in Christo’s lifetime.

Many years in the planning, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s outdoor projects generate an extensive archive of preparatory material detailing the organisation and execution of these projects, and those not yet realised. The Serpentine worked closely with Christo to develop this exhibition of sculptures, drawings, collages, scale-models and photographs, which spanned six decades. It was the Serpentine’s second collaboration with the artist, following Christo’s participation in the 2016 Miracle Marathon.

Since 1958, barrels have been a dominant feature of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s sculptures and installations, which they have erected at varying scales internationally. The exhibition offered new perspectives on Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s career to the large-scale, wrapped and fabric-based works for which they are best known. It also traced the origins of this strand of practice, which began with wrapped paint cans and barrels and the artists’ first temporary public installation in Cologne Harbour in 1961. 

The Serpentine exhibition was timed to coincide with Christo’s temporary sculpture nearby, The London Mastaba, Serpentine Lake, Hyde Park 2016-2018. The sculpture took inspiration from mastabas – benches with two vertical sides, two slanted sides and a flat top – which originated with the first ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia. The Serpentine show provided a rich context for this new work, for unrealised barrel projects at sites including the Suez Canal (1967) and MoMA, New York (1968), and plans for Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s most ambitious sculpture yet in the Middle East, which was first conceived in 1977.