Man himself is a genus in the work of Tea Mäkipää, although the habitat of this species is the globalised cultural society of the West. In her often monumental installations, photographs, films and objects, man’s social behaviour and strategies for survival are critically illuminated alongside his attitude towards Nature and her creatures.
Biological constants like the struggle for food or social patterns such as the striving for integration thus become the objects of artistic research. When this has been completed, the audience is certainly drawn to the beauty of its artistic expression, but has also been made aware of the world’s cruelties and callousness.
Mäkipää’s new video work “Catwalk” in Studio 1 of the Künstlerhaus thus celebrates the diversity of life-forms and their manifestations, while teaching its viewers that they are not subject to any hierarchy. The biological species all adopt the same size on her catwalk; whether people, elephants or even cats appear and parade through the chancel of the former chapel.
In addition, Tea Mäkipää is showing a reduced-size version of her photo installation World of Plenty, which was made for the World Exhibition 2005 in Aichi, and selected photos from a project that is concerned with war and its visualisation in the media. In World of Plenty, she directs the viewers’ attention to a Garden of Eden where man and animals live together in harmony with opulent Nature – far too perfect to ever become reality.
