Commissioned by PhotoIreland Festival, Finnish artist Hertta Kiiski will present a new body of work called Milky Way. It is a shrine and a playground that explores co-existence between us and other life forms.
“I approach the ecological catastrophe and animal rights through the emotions and feelings they awaken. At this moment I think that empathy is the key to dispelling the artificial division between humanity and the rest of nature, and to ending the culture of oppression and exploitation – it could work as a bridge to a more equitable coexistence. Collaborating with my teenage daughter and niece I highlight the fact that our children have to deal with the catastrophe we are leaving to them.”
Milky Way addresses the topic of animals treated as milk-producing machines. The human urge to achieve domination over other species crystallises in the act of long-distance transport of unweaned calves. Despite its heart-breaking starting point, the work deals with love and hope for a better future. The installation and performance evoke questions around topics of empathy, ethics and companionship between human beings and other species. The work is aimed at all but particularly at young audiences, achieved through the young protagonists, colours, haptic materials, elements of play and thought-provoking content.
Exhibition Guide: Young Milky Way Explorers
In response to Hertta Kiiski’s Milky Way installation, Dublin based visual artist Róisín White has created an exhibition guide aimed at our younger visitors to investigate and navigate the artwork. These guides will encourage young people (and their families) to take a closer look at the exhibition, to consider the materials used (yes! you can touch this exhibit!), the themes and questions the work poses, and suggest ways that you can make your own artistic response when you get home.
Guides will be available in the gallery space and as a PDF online. Please share your response artworks with info@photoireland.org or you can tag the artist @how_fascinating and festival @photoirelandfst on social media!
The installation will be launched during opening week at Project Arts Centre, later moving to Rathfarnham Castle to join the main group exhibition Bite the Hand That Feeds You.
On PhotoIreland Festival 2021
How we eat is powerful, food is often the cornerstone of cultures, ideologies, and principles. Eating or not eating can be an act of protest, feeding or not — an act of control, food brings people together and pushes them apart. Through the presentation of current work and a number of commissions, PhotoIreland Festival presents artists exploring this contentious, yet every day, topic.
PhotoIreland Festival takes its cue from current conflicts and affairs, inviting artists to discuss complex social and global issues. With topics ranging from hospitality to colonisation, from hunger to overconsumption, trauma to technology, ethics to ideologies, to sustainability, and even surveillance capitalism. The festival brings together traditional and contemporary lens-based works, alongside film and performance, serving a cornucopia of engaging and relevant material through exhibitions, an online cooking channel, talks, and publishing, with works never before shown in Ireland.
The programme does not claim an all-encompassing representation of food-related issues but is intended as a way to invoke questions, ideas, and research. The festival brings forth questions and considerations towards a conscious and informed consumption. We invite the audience to take a seat at our table and join the conversation on the politics and poetics of food.
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Image Credits
Left Image: Portrait of the artist Hertta Kiiski and performers Irma and Elli, by Viivi Saikkonen, 2021.
Right Image: Róisín White. Portrait courtesy of the artist.
