A Comedy About a Meadow That Wanted to Own Itself
2023-


In the spring of 2021, my grandmother dies at the age of 98. Estate-related arrangements become an integral part of our family’s collective grief process. Years later, the negotiations concerning the division of the estate still continue. For a brief moment, it seems that 6,021 square meters of land, consisting of a partly forested field and wetland dominated by alder trees, may end up in my possession. With the exception of individual items, I have never owned anything.

In my current artistic process I play with the idea of cross-species ownership. Combining photographs and moving image with text, the works focus on negotiations and the porosity, complexity and ritual nature of agreement. If the law on property molds the way we are with each other, how does it affect our relationship with other creatures? If I am the owner, do I own every single blade of grass? And then what? Can a meadow own itself?

"They say if one does not own then someone else will come and own. There is no way to get around it, they say. So let me be that someone. Let me just own and be. Let me change the way I do, at the pace that things tend to happen to me."

Excerpt from Power of Attorney zine publication


Upcoming:

* Gallery Hippolyte, Helsinki, 8. - 31.8.2025
* Poriginal Gallery, Pori Art Museum, 13.9.-2.11.2025

Until now:

* Res Nullius, Gallery Huuto, October 2023
* A Comedy About a Meadow That Wanted to Own Itself (Part I), publication on newsprint, 32 pages, fi&eng, edition 10
* A Comedy About a Meadow That Wanted to Own Itself (Part II), Gallery Lennätin, May 2024
* Power of Attorney, zine publication, A4, fi&eng, edition 100


Kindly supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland and Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation.