CANDIDATE 2002

SAARA EKSTRÖM

Saara Ekström was born in Turku in 1965. She was trained at Åbo Ritskola (Turku drawing school) and later at Northern Arizona University, and now lives and works in Turku. She is a versatile artist, working with installations, video, photography and drawing. In her installations, she has used materials such as human hair, tattooed hams and intestines stuffed with roses. Her subsequent installations have also featured bandaged flowers and video and photographic material documenting a child first injuring flowers, then trying to heal them. The artist deals with themes such as moral growth, our strategies for dealing with guilt, regret, and penance. She takes an interest in both organic and inorganic materials, the relationship between the physical and the spiritual world. The materials themselves contain powerful symbolic charges. In summer 2001, she built miniature cities out of humdrum leather furniture in the caverns of the Retretti art centre, in spaces where the floors were covered in a film of water, creating a surreal microcosm. The view inside the caverns gave an illusion of an aerial perspective. Ekström has also had enlargements made of old postcards from holiday resorts. She has then washed off part of the watersoluble ink, letting the colours run together. These sunlit views could be construed as icons of happiness and beauty, while at the same time being problematic and even negatively charged because they are so widespread and so at odds with the tastes of highbrow art lovers.