Kangas

Heidi Pietarinen (FI), Noora Sandgren (FI), Anne Yoncha (US), Melissa Grant (UK)

Digital jacquard weaving by Vesa Annala Weavers (FI)

8 meters tall x 1.4 meters wide

2021

This jacquard weaving stitches together images from drawings, photographs and microscopic slides from the Kilpisjärvi expedition. The group of artists are interested in the Finnish idea of ‘kangas’ – a word which translates to ‘fabric’ and ‘forest type’, describing the intricate enmeshing of species, human and non-human, aerial and terrestrial. After collecting and identifying the microbial ‘collaborators’ in Kilpisjärvi, this piece attempts to get to know these other-than-human materials. The artists ask: what are the abilities of these microbes? What are the bridges between us? This ongoing process of understanding involves many translations, moving from analog to digital, and back again.

High Altitude bioprospecting (HAB) is a long term project involving scientists and artists in a quest to explore extreme environments, particularly the stratosphere and detect and capture microorganisms that may live or survive there. The exhibition draws on the expertise of a family of HAB collaborators who come from the worlds of science, engineering, art and maths. Their work investigates the invisible microbial life in the air, understood as both a co-existing benign presence or as a potential threat, as has been found in recent times of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Kangas was first exhibited at BOM Gallery – please see the Atmospheric Encounters exhibition page for additional info.

Images below are from the Atmospheric Encounters exhibition’s next stop, at SOLU Space of the Bioart Society in Helsinki, Finland: