Tülay Schakir (b. 1968) is a Finnish visual artist and lighting designer.
Schakir has designed lights especially for contemporary dance and lighting for architecture. Light is also important part of her visual artist’s practice, and many of her artworks are in public space. Her approach to light is usually quite conseptual and minimalist. Schakir has also researched public lighting, especially from the point of view of feeling safe or unsafe. Schakir is currently a doctoral student at the University of Arts, with a research title “Light, Perception and Being as Art”.
The artwork discussed was Museoitu maisema (Landscape musealized) from 2001. It consists of a wooden barn door and fluorescent tubes shining from its slits. There are a lot of barns with that kind of slits in between the wall boards in Finland, so the phenomena is most likely familiar for any given Finn. Anyhow, the highly visible trademarks and spigots give an uncanny atmosphere – is it ok to think that fluorescent light is actually beautiful? The artwork is an interesting combination of nostalgia and technology, countryside and offices, and dreams and reality.
EDUCATION
University of Arts, doctoral student
1999 Department of Lighting and Sound Design at the Theatre Academy
1999 Studies in Kunsthochschule fϋr Medien in Cologne
1995 Visual artist, Tampere Institute of Art and Communication
ACCOLADES
2011 Lighting Design of the Year for St. Laurus Chapel in Vantaa
2000 State Prize for working both as an artist and a lighting designer
2001 Young Artist of the Year