HELSINKI at Kesäkellari
“HELSINKi” showcasing the current Helsinki art scene from an agency perspective, will take over the space during 1.8.-22.8.
Penthouse creates space and visibility for local new art, operates from a sense of community, and promotes active cultural dialogue
Tori-ing / 2023-2024 / Wall Installation
Installation using found objects. Woven paper machè, hemp yarn base, translucent gesso. + Sound Installation.
Work includes: birch stick (Finland), copper penny (2011, US), rocks and pebbles (multiple sites), two unnamed thrifted home photographs from the 1940-50s (bought in in 2003 estate sale on Paddock St, Watertown, NY, US), cotton (2015, NC, US), metro card (NYC, US), children’s book (addressed to artist, Finland), pick-pocketed marble (NY, US), toy dinosaur (sandbox in Durango, CO, US), mural painting shoes (Finland), and spruce bark biomaterial made in a chemistry lab (2024, Finland).
Paper machè uses paper waste collected from the home (ex. newspapers, old magazines, sticky notes, mail leaflets).
Deleuze and Guatarri in their work A Thousand Plateaus describes two forms of space; one smooth and one striated. The prior being open, and porous, examples being the sea or deserts. The latter being measured, controlled, and bordered, like highways and rail roads. Sites are in constant flux of being smooth and striated, like a storm that sweeps a city. They describe weaving to be a textile form being the most striated. I use paper machè weaving as a way to smoothen a striated space, the typical measure typically found in a striated space is broken. The weaving is no longer so grid-like, but becomes porous and holey. This represents a relationship with how we act within and perceive smooth and striated spaces.
Many of the found objects and mementos apart of the work are sourced from my childhood. If the woven paper machè describes a striated site, like a city, becoming more smooth, then what role does memory, and especially memory migrated from elsewhere hold here? Does it contribute to the smoothening or more towards striation? What if both and/or neither? How can our memories permeate the space?
Objects and memories that can be found in memory of a tori: a child lost their toy and book, plant life, rocks, pebbles, a lost metro card, and someone has left their “dog shit” on the cobble stones…