Pipoca (Paola De Ramos) was born in Curitiba, Brazil in 1986. Pipoca creates performance and installation to stimulate body sensation and perception, challenging peoples’ notion of their private and public psychological space. Most of her work is charged with intense colours, complex combinations of different materials and with a pitch of sour humour.
Parsa Kamehkhosh is a Helsinki based designer, visual and performance artist, born in Tehran in 1985. Through his practice, he explores the notion of aesthetic aura that appears from the proximity, juxtaposition and joints of materials and shapes.
Niko Skorpio is a transdisciplinary artist, researcher and educator based in Finland. Through his works Niko Skorpio explores various forgotten, abandoned, obscure and secluded areas in culture, nature and the psyche. Niko Skorpio holds an MA in Visual Culture and Contemporary Art from Aalto University, Helsinki.
My name is Melanie Popp and I am an art teacher currently caring for my two children full time. Though I am out of the traditional classroom setting for now, you can’t take the art teacher out of me! I’ve been creating opportunities for process based art play for my children since before they could wield paintbrushes.
The Finding of Hän1 is an original puppet theater production that explores the inherent duality of human nature and imagines the lifespan of an ancient object. Themes and characters are drawn from coastal cultures and stories from around the world.
Script: Paola de Ramos, M. Hasnan Habib, Parsa Kamehkhosh, Niko Skorpio, Melanie Popp
Puppets: Paola de Ramos, M. Hasnan Habib, Parsa Kamehkhosh, Niko Skorpio, Melanie Popp
Stage: Paola de Ramos, M. Hasnan Habib and Parsa Kamehkhosh.
Lighting: Paola de Ramos, M. Hasnan Habib
Narrator: Melanie Popp
Sound: Maria Mar, Elias Kismet Poutanen
Camera: Jakub Bobrowski
Video Editing: Uzair Amjad
Melanie Popp, The Finding of Hän, 2020, relief print on rice paper
Melanie Popp, The Finding of Hän, 2020, relief print on rice paper
The Russian invasion of Ukraine should be stopped as soon as possible, but how? The world is showing great solidarity with the suffering side, but should it go hand in hand with humiliating, neglecting, and demonizing Russian passport holders? Can the problem be solved by putting more limitations and borders on ordinary citizens already oppressed by an authoritarian state?
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After all the materiality of the world has been grasped, the next natural step of the Great Devourer - capitalism - is to go deeper into the immaterial within the confines of our minds. As we go about our days, we seep valuable information that can be monetized directly and made into codes of control, redirection, and upkeep. A new frontier has been unhinged by cracking our minds open, where the laws are all but settled. Is the immaterial world beyond our ethical discussions and legislative apparatuses too ethereal to be real, or can a reasonable amount of responsibility be demanded everywhere?
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In Samoa, an archipelago situated closeby to the said line, this border was however not abstract. It wasn’t something that could be as easily ignored throughout the remaining year. The line was too close to overlook. By way of geographic proximity, the island chain was more likely touched and disturbed by it. In 2011 the government of the territory thus took matters into their own hands. It decided to change its own future by changing its own place in time. To achieve this modification, Samoa decided to get rid of December 31 2011 in order to be able to slip through the thread of time. While the world had remained in its configurations of time, the island had, with a blink of an eye, altered its own configuration of time. By disappearing December 31 2011, by erasing twenty-four hours, Samoa catapulted itself twenty-four hours ahead into the future.
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The works, in relation to each other, successfully embody the curatorial statement, ‘we are an inseparable part of nature and therefore always connected to each other.’ They weave together the concepts of life, love and death, therefore, establishing a coherent larger framework of the exhibition. This thematic consistency is also visible in the aesthetic production with a striking palette of cool earth tones. While the composition of the works within the confines of the gallery makes perfect sense, the overall exhibition raises more questions than it answers in regards to its larger socio-political implications. Collectively their works hardly do justice to the subject matter that they deal with.
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