Tayeba Begum Lipi, Love Bed (2012), stainless steel, 31 1/4 x 72 3/4 x 87 inches, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Wednesday, September 16, 2020
The Guggenheim Circular: Tayeba Begum Lipi’s Love Bed
The Guggenheim Circular’s online exhibit “Home” is a collection of works that explores the domestic space’s varying meanings and endless contradictions. In it, artists address the home as a site of heritage, relationships, and memory. One such work is Love Bed (2012), in which artist Tayeba Begum Lipi used metal razor blades to construct an ersatz bed, a piece of furniture associated with the intimate space of the home, thereby transforming a functional object into a site of charged psychological reality. Through the material, Lipi brings an everyday household object under scrutiny, highlighting our relationship to the objects around us, especially within the home where these objects reside in close proximity to us and signify our roles within the space through memory association. The artist not only illuminates the dynamic between humans and the objects around them, but also addresses the domestic space as a site of human interaction in which objects, such as the bed, become a mediator or site of interaction. By re-imagining the bed as a dangerous object made with razor blades, Lipi references the gendered violence that occurs in domestic spaces, forcing the viewer to confront this violence by giving the experience physical form, an attribute that makes Love Bed so visceral.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think your exhibition review is really perfect. First you clearly describe a little bit of the “Inside the Home” exhibit that can let people get the basic atmosphere about the works. Then you introduce the work. You describe the materials of this work which is very great cause the image is small and people may not see the work clearly. Also you explain what the artist wants to show through this work and meanings of each materials. You have clear summary and interesting description and analysis. I really like your review and it also help me to find how to write a great exhibition review.
ReplyDeleteOn one side are the household items that we use every day, on the other side are hard and sharp metal materials, just like the home in memory, the life in memory, they will never have only warm and sweet memories, and also it will never only be the topic of violent disputes. Contradictory, but it exists like this.
ReplyDeletePaulina, this is an excellent and thought provoking review. I'd really like to see a little bit more time spent on the idea of the bed and the domestic as a source of violence. Childbirth is one visceral example, but along with that I begin to imagine scenarios of domestic violence against women in the home. One idea that is also brought to mind is the change in meaning of this piece during the pandemic. When we are effectively trapped in our homes, our bed, previously defined as our safe space, has become more of a prison, and more of a site of pain, depression, and uncertainty. On a larger scale, I feel the bed can signify our relationship to our home in general, along with all that is intimate to us. On a small technical note, I might do some edits on the introductory sentence to make it flow better, because its length leads to some confusion in reading.
ReplyDeleteThe contradictions that you talk about are well illustrated in the imagery that the museum provides for us in their website. Whith out going into detail of every piece you have illustrated the passion that the artist have in his piece, artiqualiating the proper pointers need for better comprehension.
ReplyDelete