Petra Vehviläinen
Spirits
12 November–5 December 2021
An installation with leftovers
My studio is filled with growing piles of various packing materials, wrappings and leftovers from the food I have eaten and the items and materials I have used, cardboard, various types of plastic – hard, soft, brittle, tough, paper towel and tape lumps, foil, painting rags, apple stems, broken sticks, candle pieces… On the floor, there are thread clusters, clumps of concrete, clay and plaster and various more and less recognizable pieces and fragments.
For about a year and a half, I have been collecting leftover material generated at my studio with the intention of establishing some kind of poetic relationship with it. Soon I noticed that I had ended up working with various textile and handcrafts techniques. I felt that time- consuming weaving, darning and tacking were ways of handling the materials respectfully and reciprocally.
I reflected on my own roots, the networks of my own materiality and my family’s history of handicrafts skills, which for me did not extend beyond the waffle cloth towel made in primary school, the handicrafts traditions included in my cultural heritage, in terms of which I feel like an outsider, and the breakdown that has made me feel uncertain about where I am from and where I belong. I think about the powers that traditions associate with various items, totems and cult items – especially certain Karelian hand towels (known as “käspaikka”) that, in addition to being used for wiping, had numerous supernatural powers, for example an ability to carry the spirits of the dead. I also see leftover materials and trash as some kind of spirits or ghosts that float around us but which we want to forget or hide from ourselves. When you throw something away, it does not just disappear – it goes somewhere else, perhaps it changes. I think about the processes through which materials are generated, their journey to us, the networks and material hierarchies they are part of, and how they reveal who we are.
Petra Vehviläinen is a visual and performance artist who lives and works in the Helsinki archipelago. The content and form of her works are based on a post-humanistic and ecofeminist mindset, empathy and local aspects. Vehviläinen has created works in urban spaces, nature, galleries and on various social media platforms. A characteristic element in her work is that ideas find a suitable form and thus the techniques and tools used vary in different projects. “Spirits” continues and deepens the characteristic practices of tying and knotting, in which discarded and/or found objects form spatial networks and are intertwined with thinking processes.
The exhibition has been supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
