IINA KUUSIMÄKI

Artist-curator

 

The exhibition WE ARE WHAT WE REMEMBER – and what we forget is part of my Praxis MA degree thesis. I began my studies in 2012, but they were interrupted by a neurological illness (ME/CFS), which gradually diminished my ability to work. Finally, thanks to new treatments, after years of illness, my health improved enough to resume my studies in 2024, after a ten year break.

 

I  worked as a visual artist before extending my curiosity to curating. Alongside my own artistic practice, I worked in galleries and an art museum where I greatly enjoyed the unhurried time spent with the artworks. Work centered on the slow contemplation of art, close to the works, their creators, and the viewers has been a path close to my heart alongside my own artistic practice.  The illness affected my ability to work on my own art but in the last year, this part of myself has also returned, in a different, new way.

 

Terhi Vuotto's Ryynänens was the first series of works around which I dreamt of continuing my thesis years ago. Through the Ryynänens, I contemplated generational chains, archetypes of relatives, and the points where we find ourselves within these chains and archetypes. I planned making the Ryynänens the entire focus of my thesis. Memory, remembering and time were intrinsically linked to the world of the Ryynänens – with time the idea for the exhibition evolved to address these themes more broadly.

 

While researching the function of memory from a scientific perspective I understood how inextricably linked memory is to the formation of our selves. As a young art student in London, I remember watching countless people on the busy underground and imagining their inner worlds hidden within their physical outlines.  After reading Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space (La Poétique de l’espace) around the same time, these inner worlds were given a perfect description: intimate infinity. The immateriality of each person's inner space of intimate infinity with its  tangeable outward effects in the physical world, has always fascinated me—not only in the world of humans, but also animals.

 

The next artist in the plans for the exhibition was Inari Virmakoski. The length of her life and the vastness of her inner memories make her presence extremely compelling, which is particularly evident in her performances. While thinking about Virmakoski, Mercedes Krapovickas repeatedly came to mind.  I sensed a similar gentle power in their artistic expressions. I was eager for them to meet each other. Perhaps they could get to know each other through a collaboration? Krapovickas' experimental approach to music performance practices combined with Virmakoski's performance art would be a fascinating combination. A wordless interaction where two people's inner intimate spaces of infinity meet, getting to know each other through creative gestures. Initially there was going to be a joint performance at the exhibition, but  I longed for a lasting memento. Finding a suitable filmmaker was challenging. Eventually, the perfect person emerged: Virmakoski's longtime, close friend Marjo Levlin, whose visual storytelling has a beautiful subtle quality.

 

In the works of Simo Mantere and Viva Granlund, the space of intimate infinity is present in visual form in very different ways. Mantere's works possess an enigmatic quality, directing the viewer to their own inner imaginative space, while Granlund's works have a flowing abundance into which one can immerse oneself.  As the curator, considering the exhibition as a whole, I’m fascinated by these contrasting directions to which their works flow.

This is my first experience being a sole curator of an exhibition. It has clarified my own central ideas as a curator. Art in all its forms is an excellent means for communicating all the realities of being a human. My aim as a curator is to be close to  people – both the creators and the experiencers of art. To bring together people who inspire each other, to listen, to learn, to participate, to enable situations – so that interaction through art is as vibrant and profound an experience as possible, both within and beyond exhibitions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Text by Iina Kuusimäki