Milla Toukkari
Fold- fold- / -ing -ing
Galleria Huuto Jätkäsaari, Jätkä 1
26.8.–10.9.2017
– – unable to speak save in a child’s words of one syllable; without shelter from phrases – I who have made so many; unattended, I who have always gone with my kind; solitary, I who have always had someone to share the empty grate, or the cupboard with its hanging loop of gold.
‘But how describe the world without a self? There are no words. Blue, red – even they distract, even they hide with thickness instead of letting the light through. How describe or say anything in articulate words again? – save that it fades, save that it undergoes a gradual transformation, becomes, even in the course of one short walk, habitual – this scene also. Blindness returns as one moves and one leaf repeats another. Loveliness returns as one looks, with all its train of phantom phrases. One breathes in and out substantial breath; down in the valley the train draws across the fields lop-eared with smoke.
‘But for a moment I had sat on the turf somewhere high above the flow of the sea and the sound of the woods, had seen the house, the garden, and the waves breaking. The old nurse who turns the pages of the picture-book had stopped and had said, “Look. This is the truth.”
In 2013, while walking on the shores of the outer archipelago, I noticed a recurring feeling – a simultaneous feeling of fascination and disgust caused by the waves beating and withdrawing from the rocky seashore. The inevitable happening, two becoming the same and simultaneously diverging. The salty water and rock separating together, through each other. The Fold- fold- / -ing -ing exhibition examines, in particular, this feeling. Briefly and perhaps with too much explaining, I reveal that it is my personal uncanny valley. I examine on the one hand the fear of moving closer and on the other hand the irresistible desire to see it closer, to smell the seaweed and feel the slimy rocks. I am especially interested in the disgust and fear – where do they come from?
A molding surge. Gradual change. Interaction that cannot be seen but is uninterruptedly present. Subconsciously? I have had dreams of ending up in the water. Even in different states these minerals reflect each other and I see a desire to become something, something that the other one wants the most. To merge into the other one. This integration is an illusion, but a captivating one which promises much and provides, according to Lacan, the prototype for the ego.
In addition to writing and reading, I trace the origin of my experience through two sister exhibitions, the first of which is this Fold- fold- / -ing -ing. Separate, yet inseparably present is Seas which will open at Galleria Uusi kipinä in Lahti about a week after the closing of the Fold- fold- / -ing -ing exhibition.
Milla Toukkari is a Helsinki-based artist who graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 2015. Toukkari is one of the founding members of the Kellaripress workshop in Vallila where she has also worked for several years. At the center of her works are printed images and their meanings, especially uniform expression being questioned through the processes of printed art. The use of collages is a principle guiding Toukkari’s expression.
References:
Woolf, Virginia: The Waves (1979)
Haapala, Johanna: Jakautunut minuus: Jacques Lacan ja ranskalainen psykoanalyysi (1991)
Glowinski, Marks & Murphy (eds.): A Compendium of Lacanian Terms (2001)
