Iiris-Lilja Kuosmanen and Anniina Lehtinen
Water Rituals
13.-5.2.2023
Water Rituals is an installation that consists of Iiris-Lilja Kuosmanen’s photographs and video work and Anniina Lehtinen’s soundscape. It is a meditative depiction of the changes in the environment and the power of water – the way in which water takes over areas and creates something new. We have examined water as a life-sustaining element and the rituals and traditions created around it. We look for ways to present the different states of water. The visual content of the exhibition was shot in places that people have changed in an environmentally unsustainable manner as well as in sacred places where people have worshipped water.
The works lead gallery visitors to a time where water takes over areas after humans. The photos show the signs of environmental destruction, which provides a sharp contrast to the natural world of the video work. The exhibition depicts how these two extremes shape each other. The soundscape heard through the loudspeakers takes one to a water-filled ethereal world where the water comes from deep within the earth and humans and reminds one of an ancient time when people would get together to perform rituals around this sacred element.
The exhibition features Iiris-Lilja’s cyanotypes and photographs: pigment prints that spread throughout the space, also on the floor. There is a lot of material from the coast of Normandy in France, where the tides are large. The effect of the moon and the underwater world revealed underneath the tides play an important role in the exhibition. The underwater shapes and events that one can only examine as an outsider.
Anniina Lehtinen is a Turku-based composer and musician who writes and performs a wide range of music for the piano and several other ensembles, sometimes adding sounds of nature, electroacoustic elements and her own voice to the music. Her extensive repertoire ranges from classical music to film music and art pop. Anniina earned her master’s degree from Haute École de Musique in Lausanne and has played recitals and chamber music and performed as a soloist with orchestras in both Finland and abroad. She regularly works in artist residencies all over the world.
Iiris-Lilja Kuosmanen is a Kuopio-based photographer who earned her Master of Fine Arts degree from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2012. Iiris-Lilja lived in France from 2013 to 2019, first at the Hôtel Chevillon artist residence in Grez-Sur-Loing. She has had several solo exhibitions in Finland and has taken part in many group exhibitions in both Finland and abroad.
The two artists have worked on the same project as a team since 2017.
Thank you
Arts Promotion Centre Finland, the Finnish Cultural Foundation, Oskar Öflunds stiftelse and ACCR with the support of the French Ministry of Culture.
Contact details
iirisliljakuosmanen(a)gmail.com, lehtinen.anniina(a)gmail.com
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