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Annukka Mikkola: Lasihelmipeli / Ajan virtaa – The glass bead game / The Flow of Time
In the Stream of Time:
The Glass Bead Game & Sinipiika, the Bird of Fortune
"It is early March 2020. A plane has just lifted off from Andalusia, and below it stretches a patchwork-like, breathtakingly beautiful landscape—still untouched by the coronavirus. The terrain alternates in hues from yellow ochre to reddish brown and blue-green. Narrow roads cut across the surface like seams turned outward."
The visual idea behind The Glass Bead Game emerged from personal anxiety and was inspired by the view described above—a photograph taken from the airplane. A sauna dress I wove from coarse linen in the 1980s and 1990s, along with jacquard interior fabrics I later designed, found a new role in this work.
The Glass Bead Game triptych consists of a field, a dress, and a game—fundamental elements of life; the bog, the hoe, and Jussi (a reference to Finnish literature)—and includes a game board I once found at a flea market, my modern-day hoe. Now, new life and a note of hope are brought into the work through Sinipiika, a 1960s recycled doll reimagined as a tapestry figure. Through her, the conceptual narrative of The Glass Bead Game takes human form. Life goes on.
The philosophy and name of the triptych are based on Hermann Hesse’s novel The Glass Bead Game (1943). Hesse’s work is a kind of "monument of time." It holds the presence of all times in the clash of worldviews and resonates with our own era.
Additional work images
