Mia Makila

(click to expand and enlarge image)

I first came across Mia's work via that contemporary art book I reviewed called The Upset. It seems after some cursory research that she is often labelled as a horror or gothic/lowbrow artist, however the first thing I immediately thought of when staring at the painterly abomination called Grimreaper (last image) was 'bad' painting. Mia definately deserves to have the humorous and perversely child-like aspect of her work analysed, its not all about angst and madness you know.

Like Armen Eloyan or George Condo, Mia gives a strangely nostalgic reminder of a time when cartoons could get away with being violent, its an alien sensation to most people of the 00's to have something other than media equivelant of baby food visually and audibly spoon fed to them. Theres also a hard sexual element to her work (particularly her paintings) thats about as subtle as that Funnelgirl meme. The ejaculatory splatters of white and pink paint are a harsh jibe at the myth of the heroic masculine painter, but they also give the works an unpretentious appearance as they ruin their own status as fine art objects. They invite abandonment and waste.

Some of her most unpleasant works are her altered antique photos. Presumably brought from flea markets and such, Mia violates the tenderness of these anonymous people by scrawling fanged visages over the individuals faces and surrounding them with phallic and blasphemous symbols. They remind me somewhat of Anna Barriball's ink and graphite altered photographs, only instead of cool and calm appropiation we have instead demented vandalism. We know Mia is an lovely, decent and law abiding person but theres very little in these alteration works to seperate them from the genuinely defiled artefacts of some lost vagrant soul. I admire an artist that can transcend taboos and ingrained expressive transgression in order to create something laudable.

http://www.miamakila.com/

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