HIPPOLYTE STUDIO
Kalevankatu 18 B, 00100 Helsinki, Finland
+358 9 612 33 44, www.hippolyte.fi/studio
Open: Mon-Fri 12:00-17:00, Sat-Sun closed

2.7.-7.8.2009
Kristiina Koskentola
GOBI

 

Video installation: ’To see one's own face’ and ’Ambiguity’, 2007 Gobi desert, Mongolia.

These two video works reveal the scars and marks in people and society in a subtle way, giving the viewer an opening to relate to them. They are about identity, its origin; also about memory. They do not try to provide an answer, but tell a story about our identities, formed and deformed, and the human condition. In the video’s two figures are to be seen, one ’portrait’ and one symbolic figure, a cross / swastika being drawn on the sand with a barber’s knife. The first referring to the origin and identity and the later to ancient symbolism and its ambiguity. The blade cuts continuously into the figures, deforming and making disfiguring scars. The sound of the carving is dry, cracking and in the background one hears the wind and the loneliness of the huge desert, like endless acoustics. The figure gradually becomes unrecognizable and will slowly disappear as the wind blows over.

Asia is geographically placed at the one end of the ex-Soviet Union whereas Finland is on the other. They also have a common history in the practice of shamanism. I am interested in how this common earth-related background influences the way people are thinking and are looking at the body today despite the cultural differences and geographical distances. I wanted to contextualize my work in a new way. I 'm interested in how to be universal while remaining insular. In Asia there is a way of making body-related art and using organic materials that appeals to me. I see a relevant thinking in my work and I want to research this.

Finnish people originate from Central and North Asia and walked along the Volga to Europe. Their language belongs to an old Uralic lingual family. Finnish is one of the purest of the still existing Finno-Ugric languages and is rooted in North-Asia, where small tribes still speak these kinds of languages.

Kristiina Koskentola

 

Kristiina Koskentola (1967) is a Finnish artist, based in Amsterdam.  She graduated for her Masters in the Dutch Art Institute (2007). She works with a range of media: installation, interventions in public space, video-performance and photography. Recently she has been working in China and Mongolia. And exhibiting among others in the Zendai Moma in Shanghai, Huang Yan Contemporary Art Space in Beijing, Museum De Lakenhall in Leiden and Gallery W139 in Amsterdam. This exposition in Gallery Hippolyte is her first solo in Finland.

Kristiina Koskentola, To see one's own face, 2007 (videostill)

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More information:
Hippolyte Studio, +358 9 612 33 44, info[at]hippolyte.fi