Kukka / Flower

When making environmental art from living plants I have experienced climate change in a very tangible way, in my own skins too. We lose flowers all the time from all over the world because our activities affect the weather and plants in all corners of the world. Flowers belong to all; a flower is a joy, it is a victory over life-destroying forces. But do we have to prepare for an era of artificial flowers?

When the foyer of the Art Museum was confirmed as the place for my flower artwork, the idea of a kind of a greenhouse grew stronger. The winter with little snow and no light enticed me to make the foyer's window wall bloom with glossy pictures and transparencies. The aquarium-like composition can be viewed both from inside and from the inner ward, from outside. The appearance changes according to the standpoint, time and lighting.

For my "greenhouse" I have gathered strange and endangered flowers by photographing particularly from South Africa. I also recirculate flowers: Last autumn I created in Cape Town the environmental artwork Frozen Flowers from Finnish and African flowers, now some of the same flowers blossom as pictures in the windows of the Art Museum. During spring I'll test if proteas that prosper only in the Cape Peninsula will sprout in a foyer in Kuopio.

Artificial flowers from all over the world come to life in the Flower Aquarium, spinning merry-mottled in the water. The artificial flowers have been collected by my mother, from whom I may have inherited the need to sow flowers around myself. My works in the exhibition are connected with each other by sunflowers, whose light is common to people in the South as in the North.

The materials of my works are photo-based film stickers, artificial flowers, seeds, glass, and the basic elements earth, air, water and light.

Expert assistance to the sticker works was given by Messujentekijä.