STRATA
| a layer of material, naturally or artificially formed, often one of a number of parallel layers one upon another |
OPENING 11.10. 17-21
OPEN TO PUBLIC 12.-14.10. 14-19
Strata is a joint project by artist duo Petra Martinez and Inka Wallgren that was started in spring 2022; a process-based and transformative installation work. The starting point of the work is found and recycled material and stuff rediscovered laying around in the corners of the artist studio. The instinctive and spontaneous processing of the materials lead into several different co-created outcomes in different locations.
The first part of Strata was exhibited in the parallel program of Fiskars Village Art & Design Biennale in the summer of 2022 in Fiskars' Old Foundry. After the YÖ KEKRI exhibition the work will be again dismantled and packed up to await a possible future form and location.
The progress of the work and the creator duo´s search for a shared view can be followed on the instagram account s_t_r_a_t_a.
“In the creation stories of the Hopi, Pueblo, Navajo, Choctaw, and Cherokee peoples, Spider Grandmother is the principal creator of the universe. Ancient Greek stories included an unfortunate spinning woman who was famously turned into a spider as well as the more powerful Greek fates, who spun, wove, and cut each person’s lifeline, who ensured that those lives would be linear narratives that end. Spider webs are images of the nonlinear, of the many directions in which something might go, the many sources for it; of the grandmothers as well as the strings of begats. There’s a German painting from the nineteenth century of women processing the flax from which linen is made. They wear wooden shoes, dark dresses, demure white caps, and stand at various distances from a wall, where the hanks of raw material are being wound up as thread. From each of them, a single thread extends across the room, as though they were spiders, as though it came right out of their bellies. Or as though they were tethered to the wall by the fine, slim threads that are invisible in other kinds of light. They are spinning, they are caught in the web.”
Rebecca Solnit: Men explain things to me / Spider Grandmother
PETRA MARTINEZ is a visual artist and textile artisan whose works range from site-specific community art projects to textile installations. She graduated from MAA School of Art in 2012 and did her master's degree in Aalto University in Visual Culture and Contemporary Art graduating in 2018. In recent years she has mainly worked on community art projects and on her Rag Town textile artwork series. Martinez's artistic practice can be described as interdisciplinary, site-specific and process-oriented.
INKA WALLGREN is a visual artist living in Fiskars, who graduated from Maa School of Art in 2013. After running her own restaurants in East Helsinki and later in Fiskars for a decade known for their cultural emphasis and organizing countless gigs, events and exhibitions, she has recently cautiously returned to her own artistic practice using installation, painting, mixed-media and different handcraft techniques as her medium. Currently her work deals with themes like power, secrets, emotions and people's things and possessions.