29 April – 22 May 2016, Hertta Kiiski

Hippolyte Studio

HerttaKiiski_Wash

 

To learn parables, and blend them with bodily matters,
to learn secrets, and forget anew,
to lose knowledge
on the journey through time and layered chronicles,
obscure stone books and missing dynasties.

To become empty and renounce superstition, belief
that is wisdom, inherited from the animals
and tethered plants before they became animals.
To become empty and renounce –
how heavy wandering is with no burden,
solitude without the solidarity of animals,
difference, which the wolves flee and fear.

To arrive at last,
light, tired,
lacking words and a tent and the sympathy of animals
at the seashore, to see all this with one’s body:
The congealing light and the long stern waves,
the hard universe that turns, squeaks,
and the winds, slowly freezing,

to send out of habit
an empty boat, a cry to the wind
knowing that only fragments will get there,
or nothing.

(from: Eeva-Liisa Manner, This Journey, 1956 – translation Emily Jeremiah)

 

Hertta Kiiski’s Wash is an installation consisting of nine photographs and 197 sponges on the walls and floors of Hippolyte Studio. The images for the installation were photographed during 2015–2016 on the south head of Utö island – on the last shore before the open sea. In Kiiski’s piece the human and non-human worlds reach out to each other.

Hertta Kiiski is a visual artist who works with photography, moving image, objects, space and oftentimes with her own daughters. Kiiski graduated as an artist in 2012 from the TUAS Arts Academy’s department of photography in Turku and with an MA from the Academy of Fine Art’s programme of Time and Space Arts at the University of the Arts Helsinki. Her works have been shown in several museums and galleries both in Finland and abroad.

Green, a sister work of Wash, will be exhibited at SIC 7 May – 5 June 2016.

The exhibition has been supported by The Finnish Cultural Foundation, The Varsinais-Suomi Regional Fund and the Arts Promotion Centre Finland.

 

29 April – 22 May 2016
HERTTA KIISKI
Wash

HIPPOLYTE STUDIO
Yrjönkatu 8–10 courtyard, 00120 Helsinki, Finland
+358 9 612 33 44, www.hippolyte.fi
Tue–Fri 12–17, Sat–Sun 12–16
Closed 1 May 2016 & 5 May 2016

(image: Hertta Kiiski, Stone theater, 2016)