Athena Tacha
Heredity Study I: 1970-1971 (1972)
Athena Tacha (b 1946) is a Greek-American artist and educator who worked as a Curator of Modern Art at the Allen Memorial Art Museum from 1967 to 1973 and afterwards was a member of the Oberlin College faculty, teaching sculpture until 2000. Throughout her ongoing career she has worked in a variety of media including sculpture ( much of it outdoor/environmental work), drawing, installations, photography, film, and artist’s books. She played an important role in the development of the Conceptual movement, both in her own practice and through her curatorial work—Tacha curated one of the first major exhibitions of Conceptual work, entitled Art in the Mind in 1970 at the Allen.
In Heredity Study I (1970-1971) Tacha explores the notion of the body as a nexus of physiological and psychological forces converging to create an identity. Tacha aims to examine the genetic characteristics that render human bodies similar to or different from the bodies of their relatives. Tacha looks at the physical characteristics of a family—a father, mother, and two sons—comparing photographs of various body parts to highlight the similarities, differences, and new features relayed by genetics. She includes an excerpt from a scientific text on genetics, which comes to the conclusion that “The end result” of heredity “is a balance between many opposing forces.” The final pages display an index comparing physical characteristics of the two sons in terms of whether they are more similar to those of their mother or their father. With this empirical schema, a theme prevalent in many artists’ books of this period, Tacha executes an analytical examination of the deeply emotional bonds of family, emphasizing the function of the body as a manifestation of physical growth and regeneration in the human species.
Bibliographic References:
http://www2.hsp.org/collections/manuscripts/t/Tacha3518.htmlhttp://oberlin.edu/faculty/atacha/bio.htmlhttp://www.marshamateykagallery.com/artists/tacha/index.htmlEssay by Stephanie Tallering '12
Heredity Study II: 1970-1971 (1972)
Heredity Study II (1970-1971) follows the same premise as the first study but substitutes the artist’s own body and images of her parents for the family of the first volume. Unlike the first study, Heredity Study II is a highly autobiographical project, yet Tacha treats her subject (herself) with the same disarming objectivity she applies to the family.
Bibliographic References:
http://www2.hsp.org/collections/manuscripts/t/Tacha3518.htmlhttp://oberlin.edu/faculty/atacha/bio.htmlhttp://www.marshamateykagallery.com/artists/tacha/index.html
Essay by Stephanie Tallering '12
Ten Projects for Staircases (1972)
Tacha’s Ten Projects for Staircases (1972) addresses issues of photography, sculpture, architecture, and the relations between such mediums. The artist’s book shows photographs of ten miniature models for re-imagined staircases. The first nine models were shown together as a sculptural piece at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1971, and the eighth model, Double Spiraling Up and Down Staircase, was constructed out of cement blocks in Peninsula, Ohio and at the College of Wooster the same year. Through Ten Projects for Staircases Tacha raises questions of photography’s ability to distort scale and perspective and its veracity in representing sculpture. The images are shot at angles such that the background is obscured, and there are no means provided to judge the actual size of the models. The captions underneath each picture give the dimensions of the staircases in feet were they to be constructed. Tacha does not provide the actual dimensions of the models in inches, destabilizing the reader’s perspective until an image of the Cleveland Museum installation is shown at the end of the book. As Tacha states in the preface of Ten Projects for Staircases (1972), the works presented reflect her lifelong interest in stairs as sites of kinetic and spatial interaction. This interest appears to have arisen from Tacha’s extensive travel, especially in Greece and South America, where Inca ruins in Peru influenced her hypothetical large-scale iterations of non-functional staircases.
Bibliographic References:
http://www2.hsp.org/collections/manuscripts/t/Tacha3518.htmlhttp://oberlin.edu/faculty/atacha/bio.htmlhttp://www.marshamateykagallery.com/artists/tacha/index.htmlEssay by Stephanie Tallering '12
Double Beat (Greece) (1976)
In Double Beat (Greece) (1976), Tacha reflects on the plurality of vision, traversing the territory between Minimalism and Conceptualism. The books consists of four folded pages depicting photographs of cacti in varying light, with two green plexiglass panels serving as the front and back covers. The photographs reflect Tacha’s love of travel, creating a document of place. However, aside from the title the context for the photographs is ambiguous, depicting cacti that might grow in any desert. The close-cropped images do not show any landscape or recognizable landmarks. This ambiguity creates a somewhat Minimalist object in that the focus is on the photographs and the cacti themselves, without any external reference. Yet in taking into account the changing light effects, the photographs can be seen as a documentation of a place over time. Additionally, the plexiglass covers alter the reader’s perception of the photographs inside. This perceptual shift implies an interest in the multiplicity of vision and positivistic understanding. A phenomenological reading of Double Beat connects the book to Conceptual concerns as well, as it can be read as an exploration of the notion of vision itself.
Bibliographic References:
http://www2.hsp.org/collections/manuscripts/t/Tacha3518.htmlhttp://oberlin.edu/faculty/atacha/bio.htmlhttp://www.marshamateykagallery.com/artists/tacha/index.html
Essay by Stephanie Tallering '12