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Reviving a Fire Long Extinguished
Yehuda Emmanuel Safra
Tea Mäkipää is an artist of
the younger generation for whom the self-satisfactory happiness
that characterises our well-fed western societies is a curse. She
is engaged in a total rejection of, and resistance to, all that
is implied in this proposition. It is in view of this stance that
we admire her installations and devices. They have become requisites
in the drama that unfolds in her work.
What could be less complicated than a drainage
system? And yet an entire culture needs to be assumed in order to
take for granted so little. Tea Mäkipää refuses to
take anything for granted, she refuses each and every iota of her
environment. In doing so, she denies the very ground on which the
paraphernalia of our domestic lives are erected.
This refusal, and the mocking laughter that
accompanies her parody of our lives, are the qualities of her work,
which make it so admirable to us – intellectually and physically
alike. It’s as if her breath of fresh air had revived the embers
of a fire long extinguished. We should deem ourselves glad to have
her as a fellow traveller on this ship of fools called the world.
Yehuda Emmanuel Safran, Professor of Architecture
and Theory, is the Director of the Research Lab in Art and Architecture
at the Graduate School of Architecture, Columbia University, New
York.
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Atlantis
