Ulla-Mari Lindström
Natural Art Collection
Galleria Huuto Jätkäsaari – Jätkä 2
18.2.-5.3.2017
One of the most puzzling questions in evolutionary biology is to do with the fact that there are hardly any crossbreeds, in other words hybrids, among fossils. However, hybrids are encountered in nature from time to time and hybridization is known to be an important force driving evolution. Evolution does not have a direction or destination, instead natural selection is considered to ensure that the most viable individuals thrive and are at some point able to reproduce. As speciation progresses, individuals are only able to breed with those that are similar and thus a new species is created.
Hybrids are, however, often sterile and unable to reproduce. They are also rare and thus often particularly interesting. They change our views on nature and species and make us question our old fixed ideas about what is possible or impossible. Our own species, Homo sapiens, has most likely evolved through hybridization.
According to the intermediate disturbance hypothesis, species diversity is maximized when ecological disturbance is neither too rare nor too frequent. Disturbances alter the conditions and may promote the possibility for hybrids to exist. Natural selection works best when individuals are different. And hybrids are. They are often bigger, stronger, smarter and more resourceful than their ancestors. That is why they do better.
Crossbreeding, hybridization or mixing is not just an evolutionary freak of nature produced by chance but the foundation of cultural evolution. The ability to combine, mix and confuse is creativity and innovation at its best and a mess at its worst. Even if most of the mixes were an unviable mess, the disorder may enable conditions where things are combined in a new and unconventional way. It is something we are afraid of and at the same time desire.
Natural Art Collection is a study created with the help of natural science and visual arts, a fictional hybrid herbarium. It depicts the possible structures of new potential species randomly generated using parts of plants and animals collected in nature. The works have been created using plant and animal parts, by printing on porous thick paper with a press, combining mixed media and by photographing initial situations and proposals that have arisen. With the impressions the artist mimics the structure and shape of fossils and thus includes temporal dimensions.
Ulla-Mari Lindström is a Kuopio-based artist. She studied painting and photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and graduated in 1998. She has also studied photography at the University of Art and Design, Helsinki. After living in Amsterdam for 12 years she moved to Kuopio in 2004. Lindström has had solo exhibitions and taken part in group exhibitions in Finland and abroad. She works with photography, video and most recently printmaking methods as well as painting. Humor is often a common factor in her works.
The exhibition has been supported by the North Savo Fund.
Ulla-Mari Lindström
um.lindstrom(at)gmail.com
+358 50 911 7518
www.ullamari.com
