Installation as a part of the Nordic Art Colony exhibition in the old city hall in Kokkola. 19.7–16.8.2025.
For this installation, I turned to a series of digital drawings and collages, weaving together fragments from the Book of Kells, that luminous manuscript shaped by Irish monks in the 9th century. For years I have been drawn to the beauty of these images, as well as to the patient devotion of other medieval illuminations. In our present age, so often framed by Posthumanist thought, it seems meaningful to look back and consider how Humanism once carried knowledge and beauty through turbulent times, how fragile pages, copied and adorned with care, became vessels of endurance.
The original Book of Kells rests in Dublin, but a replica at the Burren College of Art allowed me to approach it more closely. I photographed and scanned its details, then set them alongside images of ruined temples I encountered while traveling across Ireland. Out of this encounter, between ancient ornament and fallen stone, new landscapes emerged.
The exhibition unfolded in Kokkola’s old city hall, a building slowly sinking into the earth. Its walls bear the marks of decline, yet precisely for this reason it offers itself as a poignant host for art. During one summer month in 2025, its neglected rooms were reanimated with images and voices.
My contribution was placed in a small vaulted chamber, its arches recalling a sacred space. Onto three walls I hung semi-opaque fabric prints, soft veils carrying the transformed motifs of books, ruins, characters from the Bible and even the Devil. They surrounded the viewer like pages turned outward. At the center I set one of my Philosopher’s Chairs, its concrete seat heavy, austere, an invitation and a refusal at the same time.
