Banned from the Guggenheim Museum: Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s video
Sun Yuan and Peng Yu – Dogs Which Cannot Touch Each Other, 2003, 8 Bull Terriers, 8 Running Machines Without Drive
The video work titled Dogs That Cannot Touch Each Other has only recently been removed from Guggenheim Museum’s exhibition series known as Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World. The video series has been met with disapproval and disparagement not only by some art critics but animal lovers and welfare organizations as well. Critics claim that the exhibition would have featured a series of various distinct video presentations depicting instances of unmistakable and unacceptable animal cruelty in the name of art.
Abbas Kowsari’s surprising photos of veiled female police squad in Iran
Abbas Kowsari – Police Women Academy, 2006
In 2003 the first females ever graduated from Iran’s police academy in the capital city Tehran, after undergoing a training of three years. Spiritual leader Ayatollah Khamenei himself had to give permission to Tehran’s police chief Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf to create the first all-female police unit.
Why did Olafur Eliasson try to recreate the sun in a museum?
Olafur Eliasson – The Weather Project, 2003, Monofrequency lights, projection foil, haze machines, mirror foil, aluminium, and scaffolding, 26.7×22.3×155.4m, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London
Photo: Olafur Eliasson / Tate, London
Olafur Eliasson has created a gigantic installation which in 2003 took over all space in Tate Modern, London. The artwork, a sun rising out of a mist was bound to keep any visitor in awe. In this project named The Weather Project, the Scandinavian artist recreated the sun and the sky to occupy the Turbine Hall. The whole space was covered with a fine mist that seeps into the whole space like it was coming from the outside space. Looking ahead to see if the mist escapes into the outer space, visitors saw in place of the ceiling, a replica of the space below – like a mirror. There were 200 low-sodium mono-frequency lamps at the extreme end of the hall as well. Mono-frequency lamps are mostly used in street lights and the frequency at which they emit light is so low that any other colour besides black and yellow are invisible. These lamps therefore change the view and landscape of the environment into one with two tones.
Kaarina Kaikkonen’s installations: Why are hundreds of shirts flying in the air?
Kaarina Kaikkonen – Helsinki, Finland
Kaarina Kaikkonen’s biography
Kaarina Kaikkonen is one of the most important artistic sculptors of our time. She is best known for her inventive use of second-hand pieces of clothing (mostly jackets & shirts) and molded craft paper to transform public places like churches, streets, and plazas into memorable jacket installations. The environment is incorporated into these installations in some way, resulting in a beautiful, colorful cloth landscape. Each garment individually tells a story as an extension of its past wearer, and as a group, they come together to create a history and visual retelling of their space. Born in 1952 in Iisalmi, Finland, Kaarina Kaikkonen studied medical physics briefly at University of Kuopio before switching to Finnish Academy of Fine Arts (Bildkonstakademin) where she graduated with top honors in 1983.
Inspiration and More
Kaarina is an artist whose work is primarily in the sculpture niche, with her best-known masterpiece being the installation the Way comprising 3000 men’s jackets on the steps of Helsinki Cathedral in 2000. Kaarina Kaikkonen main inspirations are her parents – mom and dad. That’s why the thematic flow of most of her renowned works involves stuff she associates with her parents. Having lost her dad to heart attack, for one, the sculptress believes that using recycled clothing as her medium offers the comfort much akin to her father’s old garments.
Thanks to several magnificent public works, both small and large-scale, she has done in her home country Finland and elsewhere around the world (read: US, UK, Canada, Japan, and Cuba), she is now a household name in the art world. That’s why it comes to no surprise that her collection has been featured in myriads of world-class museum all over the world, most notably Borås Art Museum, Sweden; Wyoming University Art Museum, US; Helsinki City Art Museum, Finland; and Aine Art Museum, Tornio, Finland, just to name a few.
Notable Work
Kaarina Kaikkonen installations and artworks are monumental and glorious both in creativity and size. The central theme in all her work is using recycled stuff to relive the essence of the previous owner and add nuances to public places. As such, her work is not only approachable but also evokes complex yet ambiguous images. She’s been known to use neckties, shirts, coats, and even shoes to breathe more life into her objects. What’s more, Kaarina has also used large tree leaves prepped in resin, glass fiber, and paper, with notable examples being Ja tuuli kay sinun listesi, an impressive piece she did back in the early 1990s. Other amazing works she has done include waterfront installation in Havana, K11 Art Mall in Shanghai, and ex-church monument in Brighton.
Awards and Recognition
Kaarina Kaikkonen contribution to the art world hasn’t gone unnoticed. In her early years as an artist, she managed to snag the National Visual Arts Prize in 1989. She was awarded, subsequently, the Public Prize in Den Haag Sculptuur in 2004, the Finland Prize of Art (2001, 2013), knighted First Class by Order of the Lion of Finland, and received Honorable Mention at Cairo 11th Biennale in 2009.
Kaarina Kaikkonen – Networking, 2009 – Piazza Calderini, Bologna, Italy
Kaarina Kaikkonen – Prato contemporanea – Crossing Borders, 2014, Firenze, Italy
Kaarina Kaikkonen – Prato contemporanea – Crossing Borders, 2014, Firenze, Italy
Profane messages hammered into rocks in stunning scale
Wim Delvoye – Sweetheart, 2003
With the advancement of technology, delivering messages has never been this easy. All we do is create emails, text messages and even twitter posts, and it’s just a click away! Except for the Belgian artist who puts great effort in delivering such message, Wim Delvoye.
This artwork looks like an accident scene
Elmgreen & Dragset – Short Cut, 2003, Mixed-media installation, 250 x 850 x 300 cm
ABOUT SHORT CUT
In Short Cut (2003), Elmgreen and Dragset installed a run-of-the-mill white Fiat Uno in Milan’s quintessential strolling and gathering place for all tourists and residents, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele.
The work is a metaphor for global tourism, but also a symbol for the precarious nature of today’s world. It also describes a universe in movement that travels along endless, unpredictable paths towards fanciful destinations. The first impression of passers-by is that they have come across an accident scene: the floor is cracked and the wheels of the car are stuck among shards of the mosaic. Short Cut sparks reactions and debate throughout the city; animated clusters of people gather around the installation. On the morning that the exhibition opens, the traffic police leave a ticket on the car for parking in an unauthorized area, and two members of the city council ask for it to be removed; to demonstrate their disapproval, they stage a protest in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, eating a pizza next to the installation.
Chinese girls are observing transformation of their city
Weng Fen – Sitting on the Wall – Guangzhou 3, 2002-2003
The transitional phases and changes in China since its opening up in the 1980’s, both physically and emotionally, have been the source of inspiration for Weng Fen (b. 1961) and his work. In his earlier series Sitting on the Wall and Bird’s Eye View, Weng’s epic images focus on the upraising of urbanism in cities such as Haikou, Shanghai and Shenzhen. His subjects start out as outsiders looking into this overwhelming transformation with anticipation, fear and curiosity to being in the centre of it all. Weng then follows and evolves inwardly, shifting his attention from physical changes to emotional and spiritual transformations, from urban cities to rural countries, exploring the possibility of finding an otherworldly utopia, a place that may have existed all along in our hearts and minds, in our memories and those innocent times, which results in the acclaimed Staring at The Sea series.
Independent non-profit arts organization established in 2011 in Seoul, South Korea. Projects in 1/3 of the world's countries.
