Photographs by Jolie Ruben

Growing up, most of us had a spot in our parents’ house where our height was periodically recorded on the wall. Some of us—like 7′6″ Shawn Bradley (the second pick in the 1993 NBA draft)—probably took up more vertical real estate. His dad, I’m sure, needed a step ladder or perhaps stilts to measure and mark off young Shawn’s progress with a piece of chalk. Most of our folks probably didn’t have that problem, though.

Beginning yesterday, Slovak performance artist Roman Ondák has taken this suburban ritual and blasted it all over a room on the second floor at MoMA. Museum passersby are asked by one of two exhibition attendants if they’d like to have their height measured. Guests are then sized up, and their names are written on the wall next to the mark. “I was sort of inspired by this very simple situation, some years back, when I measured my son when he was young and growing, and wanted to expand it to a public event,” the artist tells us. “It will just probably end in a totally black rainbow or sort of network of names.”

The walls were already filling up, mere hours after it had opened. The variety of names on the wall is fascinating. My own was under G, Jean-Charles and Spyros, but over Mariah, Franziska and Namkyoung. I can’t help feeling that if we all started a band, it would melt faces on all seven continents. The work is typical in that Ondák doesn’t take a direct hand in the exhibits execution and not doing the measuring himself.

“In this way, the guards substitute my role as the artist,” he expalins. “I’m trying to define the form which would get closer to those I’m trying to distribute this to. I’m very interested in collaborating with people. I’m sure there are a lot of people who have done this with their children. This is the loop I’m interested in—returning this back to real situation. That these people would see this here, but feel that they are back in their apartment.”