In Search of the Ridiculous: Taus Makhacheva’s Performative Follies in Frieze
October 17, 2018
‘Weird’, ‘absurd’ and ‘ridiculous’ is how artist Taus Makhacheva describes her own work. Makhacheva is speaking to me about Ring Road (2018), commissioned for the recent edition of Cosmoscow art fair in Moscow, Russia, which took place in September. The work involves a proposal for a circular motorway around a mountain peak in rural Dagestan, the Russian federal republic to which Makhacheva, who was born in Moscow, traces her origins. But Makhacheva’s motorway is a little different: should it ever be built, it would be completely unconnected to existing road networks, and therefore utterly useless as a piece of transport infrastructure. ‘Completely ridiculous’, she laughs. Text by Tom Jeffreys.