It's a standard warning at most art galleries - look but don't touch.
But the rule book has been chucked out the window for the Auckland Art Gallery's latest exhibition, with US-based, Taiwanese artist Lee Mingwei.
Lee wants you to step into his art, to interact with his work.
"It's a very simple project," he says. "When people come to the gallery they can bring something that needs to be repaired, either by me or by a volunteer."
The mending project has been 15 years in the making. Lee and his partner lived in New York during the 9/11 terror attacks, which killed 400 of his colleagues.
It was there that the inspiration for this particular project came from.
"That night when I went back to our apartment, I just started getting everything out of the drawer, and everything that needed to be mended, I started mending."
The work is part of his new exhibition on at the Auckland Art Gallery called the Art of Participation.
The title gives it away. Yes, you become part of the art, like in "The Sleeping Project", where a handful of gallery-goers are selected to spend a night with a stranger without being intimate.
"Hopefully when we wake up we can have the courtesy of saying, 'Good morning, how was your evening last night?'"
The work is inspired by when Lee shared a night train cabin with a complete stranger who divulged details of his time in a Nazi concentration camp. It made him wonder how strangers can connect.
Experiences that connect people is a strong motif in Lee's work. In the letter-writing project, participants pen letters of gratitude, sympathy or regret for others to read.
"Most of them are so beautifully written because it's a very intimate moment between you and the receiver of the letter. When you read something like that from a complete stranger it really touches a different chord."
Lee says he wants the exhibition to encourage strangers to share stories.
The Art of Participation has been all around the world. It will be connecting Aucklanders until January.
Newshub.
