Saara Ekström Limbus
14 Feb - 13 March 2011, 4th and 5th floor, Kiasma, Finland

PRESS RELEASE

Saara Ekström’s art challenges our notions of beauty

Saara Ekström’s exhibition presents a broad selection of her most
recent photographic and video works. “The title of the show, Limbus,
refers to an intermediate state, such as the nebulous boundary after
death and before birth. For me, it is a kind of non-place or a
non-time,” says Saara Ekström.

Opposites such as beautiful and ugly, alive and dead, conscious and
unconscious are simultaneously present in Ekström’s art. The works are
often graphic, such as the video installation Dust made in collaboration
with the Dutch artist Thom Vink, in which iron filings move, creating
changing whirlpools reminiscent of Rorschach inkblots. Ekström is
interested in the interfaces between nature and culture, in how
attention is focused in perception, and in situations that create
instability. In her works, she instigates a process and allows nature to
contribute to the formation of the piece through putrefaction,
evaporation or wilting.

The piece on the fifth floor in Kiasma will be No Body, a three-part
video piece based on a text by Ekström. The artist will also make a new
version of her installation The Last Branch in which caged birds bring
living nature into the museum. In the new photographic series, Limbus,
floral and fruit arrangements created in natural settings continue the
tradition of nature morte still lifes. Ekström’s pictures blend
crime-scene photography with the aesthetics of memorial altars erected
at accident sites. Using organic as well as artificial materials,
Ekström creates worlds where the visible and the invisible, growth
and decay, visual attractiveness and formlessness all challenge one
another.

The exhibition is curated by Leevi Haapala, Senior Curator of
Collections. The Limbus catalogue will be produced in Finnish, Swedish
and English. In addition to lavish illustrations, the book will feature
an artist interview by Timo Valjakka as well as essays by Leevi Haapala,
the Belgian Curator and Researcher of Contemporary Art Sofie van Loon,
and the Finnish art critic Leena Kuumola.

Saara Ekström (b. 1965) has been a designated artist of the Helsinki
Festival, and she has also featured in the Ars Fennica and Carnegie Art
Award exhibitions. Her work has attracted attention in Europe as well as
in the United States, Japan and South Korea. The exhibition to be
mounted in Kiasma is part of a series of retrospectives of Finnish
artists in their mid-careers.

Further information Senior Curator of Collections Leevi Haapala, +358
(0)9 1733 6538, leevi.haapala@kiasma.fi

Tidelines
Amin Maalouf, Raija Malka, Melek Mazici, Kaija Saariaho.
28 Jan - 13 March, Kontti, 
press conferens 27 Jan at 11 am 
Created by visual artists Raija Malka and Melek Mazici together with
composer Kaija Saariaho, the work is inspired by the writings of the
Lebanese author Amin Maalouf. The theme of the exhibition is the
importance of identity in contemporary culture.

ARS 11
15 Apr - 27 Nov, Kiasma, 
press conferens 12 Apr at 11 am
The premise of the ARS 11 exhibition is Africa in contemporary art. The
themes are global, issues that affect us all.  ARS 11 approaches Africa
as a broad cultural concept. About 30 artists will be invited to
participate in the exhibition, some of whom will produce new work for
the show.  The Center for Contemporary Art Lagos CCA will produce an
exhibition of work by the Nigerian photographer J. D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere
(b. 1930), to be mounted on the second floor in Kiasma.

ARS 11 will extend across Finland and also to one venue in Sweden. The
satellite exhibitions will be curated and produced by the partner
museums and will showcase the themes of ARS 11.

ARS 11 will be part of the programme of the Capital of Culture year
2011 in Turku. The contribution of Kiasma will include two video
installations from its collections: Where is Where? (2008) by Eija-Liisa
Ahtila and Western Union: Small Boats (2007) by Isaac Julien. Both works
will be on show for the first time in Finland. This part of the ARS 11
exhibition will be produced in cooperation with the Kiasma Foundation.

The ARS 11 exhibition celebrates the 50-year history of the most
important exhibition institution in Finland. Organised since 1961, the
ARS exhibitions have played a crucial role in shaping ideas about art
and giving a face to contemporary art in Finland.

Further information
Kiasma’s communication dep kiaviesti@kiasma.fi 
Communications Manager Piia Laita, +358 (0)40 590 8805,
piia.laita@kiasma.fi or
Press Officer Päivi Oja, +358 (0)40 575 1486, paivi.oja@kiasma.fi 
PHOTOS FOR THE PRESS www.kiasma.fi/press

Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma
Mannerheiminaukio 2, 00100 Helsinki, Finland
+358 (0) 9 1733 6501, www.kiasma.fi