War of the Everyday
Jean-Baptiste Joly

Wherever the front line, there is hardly a war without images these days. It has most definitely become impossible to escape the flood of war imagery; its content leaves an indelible mark on our conscience and has arguably become a determinant reality of human existence. Tea Mäkipää’s images do not attempt to show war. They are the product of her imagination, expressing our innermost fears: Does society fall apart when its principles are replaced by the rules of warfare? In her film Solitude … it is war!, for instance, the faint lights of a faraway cityscape compose the backdrop of a menagerie of individuals living in the woods, on their own or in herds. The gestures that Mäkipää films and photographs are a direct consequence of war. At the same time, they are the most basic gestures of man in his struggle for survival: protecting and warming oneself, eating, drinking, sleeping, taking responsibility for a child, touching others, or hiding from them. With characteristic earnestness, Tea Mäkipää tells the survival story of manhood from an insider vantage point, unravelling a reality persistently concealed by the global war of images.

Jean-Baptiste Joly is the director of the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, since 1989, and a honorary professor at the Kunsthochschule Wei§ensee, Berlin.

2004
Series of five colour photo prints