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MFA student holds performance art yard sale

Nicole Gruter has a story for every object at her yard sale and she wouldn’t let you buy it without hearing the tale.

“I have a problem letting material things go without having the recipient know what it meant to me,” she said in an e-mail advertising the event. “It is fascinating to me how an inanimate object can hold so much emotional weight, conjure so many memories, or redirect your mood and I want to give each item a personal send off with my attached story.”

The third year MFA student in non-static forms therefore billed the yard sale at her Monona home on July 11 and 12 as an “Inheritance Sale.”

The hundreds of objects she was selling – don’t be offended if it was something you gave her – carry emotional weight that she wanted to purge from her system before passing them on.

“I had a revelation that I was completely overwhelmed with my possessions,” Gruter explained between stories and exchanges. “I was literally getting squeezed out of my rooms.”

The subject of hoarding and purging has been the central theme of her MFA, which included a “tea tour” performance and video about the tea set she inherited from her Dutch grandmother. The “tea tour” and other performances, including the yard sale, serve as Gruter’s platform for discussing people’s obsession with “stuff” and their difficulty letting go of it.

Indeed, some items at the yard sale proved to be too sentimental so she grabbed them back when someone attempted to ask for a price.