”What the hell? Did I just pay 12 euros to get in to a half empty parking hall and dirty toilet?!” Visiting Emma museum caused massive migraine – and it was good
Espoo Museum of Modern Art Emma
26.09.2020 – 17.01.2021 Elmgreen & Dragset: 2020
Conscious art critizising consuming and economical competitiveness, conservative, excluding norms, misuse of power and climate change – all things that are tearing us apart and causing slavery – doesn’t sound very original subject 2020. Nor does apathy and trouble this year. It’s more like something that would be nice to forget, even for a while. Yet EMMA, The Museum of Modern Art in Espoo is filled with it. The space has been transformed to a parking garage, public toilet and a sort of ”private area” telling you, that the commercial space on the wall will never be yours.
Therefore, too, parking garage is just like year 2020 – the things you didn’t want to think of are beneath your eyes, wheter you wanted it or not.
It is hyperanarchy. The unworthy, ugly space has rudely been taken to the epicentre of high culture – area normally full of exhaust and dirt is in there now. But examining the exhibition further reveals something very cathartic in the end.
Nevertheless all the unpleasantness the space contains, the solution and sensation of strenght of life comes to one quietly – it’s like some sort of invisible liquid spreading around without making a sound.
Or like the steam pouring out of drains. Because that is where it comes from – hope, the change – underground, behind the scenes, behind the masks, from sewerage if you just take a look – and from there, where we are all naked, true and the roles have been taken off. And so, the whole thing suddenly becomes a tender temple of love and hope.
The suppressing power has been taken off by tiny gestures. In front of ATM there’s a cute little baby left alone – in cash flow maybe, like baby Moses that was put to river and later salvated people from slavery. Expensive cars are locked to the parking carage with the paths of underground, drains, and the Calvin Klein pants have been left in the toilet, useless, huge silver constallation of drains taking the attention instead. Steam is silently coming out of drains – it’s definitely the dragon breathing inside the drain, of course, ain’t it different.
What is this? No army, blood, yelling, explosions… but drains, like veins. A beginnig of change.
The passive-aggressive hopefullness in this exhibition is huge. But with it it just underlines beauty in imperfection of life, sense of being alive, fragility of human beings and life, equality.
The Elmgreen & Dragset exhibition for EMMA is completed by a video by Ari Karttunen & Paperi T poetry . The poem is easy too, like reading Donald Duck. It is waking one violently up from shopping, ignorance & selfpity. It is slapping both sides, but still contains spectrum of all colours of existence and love beneath it’s anger – and versatility in hidden possible meanings. Simultaneously the poem is iterating the themes of competition, power and incoherence.
my parking garage is prettier than yours
see how beautifully some of us hit the ground
born to be born
we’ll pay when we leave
out of order doesn’t mean out of action
what happens in spaces like this
Oh you just come here for shopping
Beautiful.
The entirety is like flower blooming out of the fog of despair.
Tender revolution of acceptance
A change by acceptance and mercy
Silent but fierce love.
Michael Elmgreen (s. 1961 Kööpenhamina, Tanska) ja Ingar Dragset (s. 1969 Trondheim, Norja) ovat työskennelleet yhdessä vuodesta 1995. Kaksikko tunnetaan leikkisästä, mutta uudistavasta tavastaan haastaa taiteen kokemiseen liittyviä odotuksia ja toimintatapoja. He nostavat lempeän ironisissa teoksissaan esiin erilaisia elämänkohtaloita ja tukahdutettuja tunteita peilaten näitä laajempiin yhteiskunnallisiin kysymyksiin. Lue lisää näyttelystä tästä https://emmamuseum.fi/nayttely/elmgreen-dragset/
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