correspondence with
Riikka Keränen
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Your artworks are often made from materials that change over time, or even disappear and decompose back into the earth. What materials are you working with at the moment, and what is your relationship to them?
Riikka: Lately, or maybe I could already say during past years, I have been working with different clay building techniques, adjusting those to my own practice. Most of the time I mix a mass from clay, sand and straw, which I then slowly start to build and sculpt onwards. And just like when doing ceramics, I wait until the previous layer has dried up before I continue. Sometimes I make a tight bundle from straw, or build a skeleton from the wood, which I build the shape on. This spring I have been also making a couple of experiments with hemp concrete, which is a hemp and chalk mixture. It seems like a really interesting material and I think I might continue working with it. Most often, the materials I use are sourced locally or from or nearby the place where I make the art work. I feel that collecting the materials and refining them further is an important part of the work, and in a way also time to develop the idea bubbling under. The process of working with the material with your hands and body informs me a lot about them and their feel, and refines the idea. It also gives light on the restrictions of the materials, and on the other hand, possibilities. The artworks in this exhibition are made from clay. What’s the story behind this clay? Where does it come from, and what does it mean to you as a material? Riikka: Besides clay, the works are also made out of straw and sand. Clay is the binding force in the mixture, which attaches the grains of sand and pieces of straw together, like mortar does to tiles. I have protected the surface of the works with linseed oil and sand/clay plaster, which includes some horse dung also. The very fine fibers of the dung create a hardy structure, which can take rain and moisture well. Materially speaking the art work is a mixture of organic and inorganic matter, just like the soil is. Clay fascinates me for many reasons. It is lovely to touch and sculpt, lovely to immerse myself in - to its feel, its odour. It is versatile, and when you use it without burning, you can always add some water and it bends again, continuing where you left it. Or you can re-use the work which you don’t want to store anymore. It is somehow so incredible, how it has been shaped over such a long period of time, and accumulated in the ground. It carries such a long timeline within it, just like rocks, that it makes my head spin. The clay I use in these works is a mixture of matter from different locations. There is some Metsäkylä clay from Taivalkoski and a little bit lower quality clay from the bottom of the ditches near my home. Your family owns and cares for the forest, farm and garden in Kainuu. How is the seasonal cycle on the farm throughout the year? How do the changing seasons affect your schedule? What tasks and roles are on the other hand every year the same? And how do you divide your time between the farm and the studio, do these practices entangle with each other? Riikka: I live on the farm of my family, in my grandmother's old house and take part in a lot of the farm work. We no longer have animals, besides the chicken and rabbits my mother keeps, but we have a lot of cultivated fields. In the summertime, we have a shared garden. Yes, the seasons do influence my daily doings. During spring and autumn it is busier, when there is the field work and setting up the garden, winter time is calmer. That is when I do forest work, felling trunks for next year's firewood. If I could choose, I would do my artist work from October to May, but because it rarely is possible like that, I just try to collate different tasks to my best ability. It was already quite a while ago when I moved back to the farm, and I am already used to the mishmash of different tasks, so I don’t even think about it much anymore. As a maker I need variation and I like it that here time and tasks circulate and repeat, but still being always a little bit different, depending on the year. Often, art and other tasks overlap during the day, so that I am in my studio in the morning and then do something else in the afternoon, or vice versa. My parents are retired so we are living in a time of change, what comes to the farm. What continues and how? The other pig house is now turned into a carpenter’s workshop and the other side of the building is my studio, so we have moved to a new era in terms of that building, but there are still plenty more things to think over. Your family has lived in Kainuu for generations. What kind of relationship do you have with the local forest and soil? What heritage do you feel you're carrying forward from the region’s forestry and farming history? And looking ahead, what do you see as the reality and future of Kainuu’s forests? Riikka: I am fourth generation on the farm, each of which has brought their own changes here. Maybe I could describe my relationship to this place as belonging of some kind, or feeling of it. Where else would I be? In a way each generation surely wants to change things for good, and maybe in forestry and agriculture the idea of continuity, intergenerationality, is very central. Today, when I think about myself in the chain of generations, it is certain that changes with new perspectives will come, for example about the use of forests and what it could be. Or questions related to the fields, how and what to farm? And, could the expectations of the field and field environment be something else than the crop it yields. I am a little pessimistic about the future of Kainuu forests, even though good things happen also. I don’t think that forests shouldn’t be used, but it feels like one needs to get a lot more out of the forests, like from everything else, at an accelerated pace. Final fellings, or clearcuttings, are done to even younger forests and sometimes even the so-called logging waste is at times scraped away with stumps, so that what is left is only a desert. When you walk around there, there are many clearings, bushy forests and ‘a couple minute forests’ in between them (I think Sanni Seppo and Ritva Kovalainen used that term in their works). In Kainuu, there are a lot of state owned and big company owned forests, which I especially have expectations for - that they would change their ways of operation. But that seems to be happening too slowly. |
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Riikka Keränen is a visual artist and mixed worker living and working in Ristijärvi. She graduated from the Kankaanpää School of Fine Art in 2010. Keränen’s work involves playing and thinking in dialogue with the entire spectrum of the world’s materials. Through her work, the artist reflects upon the entangled nature between human and other-than-human worlds. Keränen's works include sculptures, installations and site-specific environmental artworks using a variety of techniques. https://www.riikkakeranen.com/ |
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