Cat valley
Haapoja Terike
Thousands of people visit the Helsinki Zoo every year. Besides presenting values of nature conservation and helping to protects threatened species, the zoo also functions as a place of representing ”the wilderness”. The cages of animals from distant areas have been carefully designed to have the appearance of a jungle, a desert or mountain side, even though constructed in the Northern hemisphere. The behaviour of the animals is hardly authentic, as their interaction with other species as well as their habitat is dramatically narrowed down. As the visitors perceive this scene, they witness an imaginary view, a nature documentary come true, willingly forgetting the constructedness of the scene. In Cat Valley, the artist documented the reflections of visitors in Helsinki Zoo from the glass walls of the cages. Three life-size screens show the visitors gazing though the glass, trying to see a glimpse of the "real" they were promised to see. However, only an artificial landscape is visible. The video and its audio track have been slowed down; the sound of the visitors starts to resemble moans of the beasts.
7 works