Review Photo: Holy Calf

Sampo Manninen

Miina Äkkijyrkkä: 6/2015 Lohja, Finland

Miina Äkkijyrkkä is not just a Finnish artist that inspires from recycled auto parts tinkering huge cows, Miina is also a farmer. It is no wonder then that she has fused both worlds to create these immense scrap metal structures. The award-winning artist, she got the „State Art Award“ in Finland in 2002, has been working with cows and studying art for almost 50 years. She nurtures and breeds cattle and she draws inspiration from them. Meanwhile she clearly knows the cows inside out: the huge metal sculptures abstractly resemble the living creatures. She studied the sympathetic animals and turns them into immense sculp-tures, which represent her familiar cows in an abstract way. So it creates a link between animal and industry. Miina shapes huge vehicle parts become sections of the cows, arranging their limbs and heads in different positions.That’s Miinas way to point out the increasing industrialization in agriculture nowadays. The Finnish farmer is a staunch opponent of factory farming. Her work has been exhibited in her home country course but also internationally, in Stockholm, Moscow and Paris. This year her two calves formed the reception committee at the Tollwood Festival in Munich. Miina Äkkijyrkkä installed her artwork calves and cows of various auto parts. An old minibus forms the body, of blue and red car parts are the cows legs and the disused side mirrors serve as ears. The two sculptures are about four meters high and five meters long.