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True Hell is a Place on Earth
Jari-Pekka Vanhala
For Domesticated Dreams, an installation
by Tea Mäkipää and Pasi Mann shown at Helsinki’s
Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in 2000, a delicious table setting
with vegetables, mushrooms and fruits had been created, only to
be consumed by living snails. A video screen showed the nervous
spectators of this Gargantuan feast in slow motion: caged chickens
pecking corn, waiting to be slaughtered.
This tableau vivant, a heaven for snails
and a hell for chickens, was designed as a visual trap for spectators.
The work posed questions not so much about the animals than about
Homo Sapiens's ruthless domestication of the animal kingdom for
the sake of his unbridled appetite.
Tea Mäkipää often creates
situations conveying a sense of alienation, or of not belonging
– a world where the human being is lost. In a sombre and melancholic
mood, she addresses the impossibility of escaping or returning.
Even when she uses elements referring to Paradise, the irrevocable
cheerfulness is overtly exaggerated, or contrasted with deep sorrow.
This seemingly innocent way of representing fragments of reality
is loaded with an inner force that catches our attention and triggers
unexpected emotions by means of images, which we might feel too
guilty to look at.
Jari-Pekka Vanhala
is a curator at the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki.
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Atlantis
