Joen kanssa / Tillsammans med älven / With the River: Part 1
A border-crossing artistic practice and work-of-art-in-progress 2021–2027 (this part consist of my individual work with the theme)
I am working by the sea in Syðrugøta. Faroe Islands in September 2022. Photo by Matti Maikola.
In Joen kanssa / Tillsammans med älven / With the River: Part 1 I work individually for example with themes that entangle women’s un/seen and many times invisible work/labour/being and un/written histories by the Torne river and the sea around the Faroe Islands. The border river Väylä / Tornionjoki / Torneälven (Torne river) and the seas around Tórshavn and Syðrugøta entangle in my storytelling/artistic practice as I am thinking-with the river/with the seas. For me, these watery bodies entwine in the work-of-art when I dive under the surface(s): making underwater video/audio, painting experimental aquarelles with the waves and the sea salts, researching water management and the relations to water, learning to tend to (thank you A) and to make water matter, working in/with different photographic and historical archives, walking after the flood along the Torne river to clean up the thrash that washed on the shores (alone and in companionship) – and shaping from the findings and ponderings works-or-art in many forms.
As a photo documentarian/poet and a storyteller my storytelling is dissolving, “diffracting” and/or “watering down” (Barad, 2007; Neimanis, 2012) and becoming something new/else, more complex – it is becoming multidimensional storytelling (Mäkivuoti, 2018). Guided by feminist new materialist thought and by many human/non-human companions I have become to “think and to be with water”. The main companion towards this thinking have been/is the border river Torne that are changing my artistic approach and thinking. This approach derives and entangles with an another on-going storytelling process, The Land of the Northern Lights, that I continue working with in parallel to the WTR artistic process.
This is an attempt to shape and enable long-term possibilities for a border-crossing artistic practice and to an entangled approach to an artistic work that work with complex themes and phenomena. As this work-of-art is in-progress / on-going I have not yet any specific outcome nor a form what becomes of this journey/floating-with. I have stepped into many streams and have to see where they bring me. There will be several different exhibitions and publications in the near future emerging from this long-term process, starting from December 2026 at Studio Jala, Haparanda, Sweden.
My first exhibition in this process took place in 2023. I was invited during a visit to the Faroe Islands by the curator Kinna Poulsen to have an an exhibition in 2023 at Vingarðurin in Tórshavn. It became With the River, By the Seas that was the first attempt to open my work-of-art-in-progress and this thinking-and-being-with-water. During my artistic work for the exhibition I was granted a stay at the artist house Kambans Hús (Listafelg Føroya) where I lived, worked and made artworks on location. Gustav Packalens Mindefond supported the artist residency and the exhibition.
I have decidated a lot of time during this work-of-art and the artistic process also to facilitate and enable joint artistic work in the different parts of With the River – hence my individual artistic work have at times been pushed aside to make other works-of-art possible. I long for more time to be able to float by myself on the river and the sea, with the waters.
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My artistic work with the different parts of the artistic process and the work-of-art-in-progress has been supported thus far by:
The Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland / Svenska kulturfonden @kulturfonden
Arts Promotion Centre Finland / Taiteen edistämiskeskus @taikegram
The Swedish-Finnish Cultural Foundation / Kulturfonden för Sverige och Finland @fondensverigefinland
The Finnish Danish Cultural Foundation / Suomalais-tanskalainen kulttuurirahasto
Letterstedtska föreningen – Finska avdelningen (mobility grant)