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02/20/11
WATERS - VESIÄ - AMANZI Finnish - South African exhibition project in Kuopio Art Museum 25.2.-15.5.2011
WATERS - VESIÄ - AMANZI Finnish - South African exhibition project 2010-2011 Kuopio Art Museum 25.2.-15.5.2011
We are all born out of water, we need water to live, and we ourselves are mostly water. Everyone on earth does not have clean drinking water, however, so equals we are not. On the other hand people everywhere are touched by the catastrophes related to the climate change: storms, floods and drought. The WATERS project has been born around these themes, through the interaction of artists living beside waters. Art is their common language.
The project combines three Finnish and three South African women artists. The South African artists are Jill Trappler and Eunice Geustyn from Cape Town and Witty Nyide from Durban. The Finnish artists are Kristiina Korpela and Jaana Partanen from Kuopio and Leena Mäki-Patola from Varkaus.The Finnish artists live amidst lakes and experience the different states of water - ice and snow, following the strong turning of the seasons. The South Africans live on the shores of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and experience the huge powers of water, but also the sufferings brought about by the lack of water.
One of the ideas of this project is to connect the North and the South, along the same line of longitude at the opposite ends of the world where the land meets the water. Seen on a map, South Africa and Finland are extreme peripheries. They are far from each other and far from the cultural centres of the world. People have, however, always tried to reach far away and unknown corners during their journeys of exploration and conquering. Artists are one species of explorers wandering towards the unknown.
The exhibition contains videos, photographs, paper works, graphics and installations using local materials, too, like water and sand. The languages of the exhibition catalogue are English, Finnish and isiZulu.
Kuopio Art Museum · Kauppakatu 35 · 70100 Kuopio · tel. 017-182 633 · www.taidemuseo.kuopio.fi