Matchbox Girl: Sonya Gee
Isn’t it a social taboo these days to wave a camera around near half-naked swimmers? I decide that this is a moment that might not easily be recorded and slip the matchbox out of my bag. Thank God it’s small or the bomb squad might be called in to check it out.
Artist, Sonya Gee has been using matchboxes as containers for tiny gifts – her aim is to “disrupt someone's day in a tiny but positive way” – and lately she’s been getting others to help her distribute them. As part of her most recent project, which monitors how far her matchboxes can spread over a 5 week period – I’ve just left one at the North Sydney Olympic Pool. Well it’s near one of Sydney’s biggest sights – the Harbour Bridge.
This all sounds very “nice” – it began as a thoughtful round of gifts for 20 of Sonya’s friends – they were highly personal and anonymous, but the contents told them it had to be from her. This is where it all started, just over two years ago, but it’s morphing into something else.
Sonya notes how it became a marker for where she’d been – a kind of breadcrumb trail, as she passed through leaving a box at steps of her travels. Twitter and Google Maps mark the drop-off points of all the boxes in this project. She employs up to date technology, which has an important role, in what is at heart a spin on and a nod towards traditional pursuits: Easter egg hunts, and parlour games like “hunt the thimble”. Our inner child can’t resist it. The “finders” don’t even know they are playing the game. This covert aspect adds a bit of daring to the enterprise.
Belonging to the Surrealist tradition and incorporating ideas of accident, the matchbox project is a twist on the tradition of the objet trouvé. The matchboxes start out as everyday objects, which are transformed by the artist, but at the end of their journey revert back to becoming found objects as they are left for others to find. Meant as gifts, positivity has always been the driving force. This also has gone full-circle, as positive feedback motivated Sonya to continue onwards. Another further result is that she now receives tiny objects to include in her boxes.
Can a matchbox be more than a bookmark in an instance in your life, more than a childish game, or more than a gift for a stranger?
The snowball effect of giving, gratitude and positive responses has produced an idea that exceeds the value of the gifts or the artist’s expectation. These small kindnesses has unleashed a bigger force. Isn’t that what we were always taught – the power of good. And that it is better to give than receive – as the biggest response is from those following the project and/or leaving the boxes rather than those on the receiving end.
The added edge is what really intrigues me – her comment ” if they dare to pick it up...” is a vital one. Despite the attractive decoration of many of the boxes, how many people will actually pick up a discarded tiny matchbox? How many end up in the trash? Ok let’s take it a step further. My matchbox held confectionery, how many people would EAT the contents. Would you eat sweets that were unwrapped, would it make a difference if the box was on a table or on the floor? Already there are issues of trust and social conditioning coming into play – we just don’t eat things off the floor and we don’t open small thrown-away bits of rubbish just in case something is inside.
The social experiment doesn’t stop there. Isn’t there a strange competitive edge to human behaviour starting to creep in? Where can I put it than no one else would have thought of? I can get it to Antarctica, won’t that be impressive and wow people. Here’s my box on the edge of a live volcano. I wavered between giving it too much thought, and then trying to come across as not being too “showy”. But I liked the idea of it being close to the bridge as visitors to the blog might know the spot – I was more interested in the locations I knew than spots I couldn’t picture. Sonya mentions the shyness that might be experienced while trying to drop off a box. I get the feeling we’re all telling a bit more about ourselves than we think we are.
Is the matchbox project a good indicator of our personality, aspirations and how we pass our time (online and away from the computer)? In this Big Brother age, the matchbox project has huge artistic merit – using a small piece of old technology packaging, it’s luring us in to taking part in a really interesting exposé. What is the matchbox project saying about us as social animals?
The matchbox isn’t just marking an instance in each life, but bringing a segment of our collective lives together, in this big game. The really fun bit is - many don’t know they are involved – and ALL of us don’t know by how much!
END
Images courtesy of Artist, Sonya Gee / See details of this most recent project:
www.blurty.com/users/matchboxproject www.twitter.com/matchboxproject
Art is the means by which life reflects on, transforms and indeed creates its values; human life without it would not properly be human at all.
Antony Gormley