Meanings and Materialities
Meanings and Materialities
Exhibition 6–15 June
Open every day 12:00-18:00Mari Keski-Korsu
Installation, Glassware, sweat-permafrost thaw-peat prints on filter paper, agar agar 2024
Cryospheric Steams Repository consists of ecosystems samples which are made in healing performances conducted in steam bath. These performances are based on a folk healing method of peat treatment in sauna. Here, the peat is infused with water released from thawing permafrost that facilitates an encounter carrying a risk of infection by unknown microbes who have been frozen for times immemorial - but even more a possibility for resilience and exchange of care. The permafrost is seen as hydrobodily relation in change due to climate breakdown and microbial ancestral knowledge making a leap in time. Speculatively, they can be essential virality for (more-than-) human evolution.
“The core of the sweat rituals consists in recognizing the importance of the gift, which manifests as thanks given to ancestors, the elements, nature itself, and the spirit world.” Kaarina Kailo, 2019
Mari Keski-Korsu is a post-disciplinary artist and researcher who explores macro-level manifestations of the ecological polycrisis. Her work is based on multispecies collaborations and her medium of expression is a hybrid combination of participatory performance, visual and live art. Her practice involves intuitive interspecies communication, hydrobodily care and walking methodology to possibly enable empathy towards whole ecosystems. She is a doctoral researcher pursuing a Doctor of Arts degree in Aalto University’s School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Department of Art and Media, supervised by Prof. Laura Beloff in the RAT research group. Her research focuses on more-than-human ritualisations in change in the (sub) Arctic, especially with permafrost microbes and she is a member in an interdisciplinary research group working in Abisko Scientific Research Station in the Access Abisko program.
Mari’s works have been exhibited internationally for the past 25 years in festivals, galleries, museums and outskirts. She is collaborating with Bioart Society and worked as an artistic director of Pixelache festival. She holds a MA from University of Arts and Design Helsinki (Medialab) and BA in visual arts from Polytechnic of Western Lapland.
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