Madeline Gins facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Madeline Gins
|
|
|---|---|
Madeline Gins in 2009
|
|
| Born |
Madeline Helen Gins
November 7, 1941 New York City
|
| Died | January 8, 2014 (aged 72) New York City
|
| Known for | Artist, architect, poet |
Madeline Helen Arakawa Gins (November 7, 1941 – January 8, 2014) was an American artist, architect, and poet.
Early life and education
Gins was born in New York City, November 7, 1941, and raised on Long Island, in the village of Island Park. She studied physics and Eastern philosophy at Barnard College.
Career
Gins met her partner and husband, artist Shusaku Arakawa, in 1963, while studying painting at the Brooklyn Museum Art School. One of their earlier collaborations, "The Mechanism of Meaning", was shown in its entirety at the 1997 Guggenheim exhibition, Arakawa/Gins – Reversible Destiny/We Have Decided Not to Die.
In 1987, as a means of financing the design and construction of works of architecture (that draw on The Mechanism of Meaning), Arakawa and Gins founded the Reversible Destiny Foundation. The Foundation actively collaborates with practitioners in a wide range of disciplines including, experimental biology, neuroscience, quantum physics, experimental phenomenology, and medicine. Their architectural projects included residences (Bioscleave House (Lifespan Extending Villa), Reversible Destiny Lofts (In memory of Helen Keller) – Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan), parks (Site of Reversible Destiny-Yoro) and plans for housing complexes and neighborhoods (Reversible Destiny Fun House, BOOM-LGBT Community, Isle of Reversible Destiny-Venice and Isle of Reversible Destiny-Fukuoka, Sensorium City, Tokyo).
She and Arakawa "lost their life savings" to the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme.
Arakawa and Gins cofounded the Reversible Destiny Foundation, an organization dedicated to the use of architecture to extend the human lifespan. They co-authored books, including Reversible Destiny, which is the catalogue of their Guggenheim exhibition, Architectural Body (University of Alabama Press, 2002), and Making Dying Illegal (New York: Roof Books, 2006), and designed and built residences and parks, including the Reversible Destiny Lofts, Bioscleave House, and the Site of Reversible Destiny–Yoro.
Death
On March 18, 2010, Arakawa died, after a week of hospitalization. Gins would not state the cause of death. "This mortality thing is bad news," she stated. She planned to redouble efforts to prove "aging can be outlawed."
On January 8, 2014, Gins died of cancer at age 72.
Architectural works by Arakawa and Gins
- "UBIQUITOUS SITE, NAGI'S RYOANJI, Architectural Body (Nagi, Okayama, Japan, 1994, Nagi Museum Of Contemporary Art)
- "Site of Reversible Destiny – Yoro Park (Yōrō, Gifu, Japan, 1995)
- "Shidami Resource Recycling Model House (Nagoya, Japan, 2005)
- "the Reversible Destiny Lofts MITAKA – In Memory of Helen Keller (Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan 2005)
- "Bioscleave house – LIFESPAN EXTENDING VILLA (Northwest Harbor, East Hampton, Long Island, NY, 2008)
- "Biotopological Scale-Juggling Escalator (NYC, 2013/Dover Street Market, New York, NY, Comme des Garçons)
