Grotesque & Arabesque (blood)

Ekström Saara

Grotesque & Arabesque is a series of works dealing with micro and macrocosmic events, a storm in a teacup. The series illustrates the events that hover on the perimeter of our observational capacity or remain totally invisible. Installing the work as large projections change the proportions of microscopic scenes and give new meanings to the events presented in them. A drop of blood or milk dissolving in a glass or water creates a captivating illusion. The series studies everyday material such as soured milk and flowers, their newly acquired decorative mystique partly due to fractal ornamentation which is based on the regularity of nature. The implicit ambivalence of ‘Grotesque & Arabesque’, both attractive and forbidding, emerges from the traditional iconography and the confusion between the animate and the inanimate. The plastic bag containing colour changing souring milk moves in a peculiar way. A drop of cream vibrates in water like a fragile Medusa. The border between organic and inorganic is vague in many ways. 

 

Production Year
2005
Duration
00:13:09
Tyyppi
Asiasana
Original Title
Grotesque & Arabesque (blood)
Finnish Title
Grotesque & Arabesque (blood)
English Title
Grotesque & Arabesque (blood)
Production Countries
Finland
Dialogue
No
Aspect Ratio
4:3
Sound
No
Cast
Saara Ekström (Author)
Press Photos
Saara Ekström works in film, photography, text and installation. Chronotopes where time and place densify, time that nurtures and erodes, the ambivalent desire to both remember and forget are at the core of her art. Ekström’s work has been shown extensively in various museums and festivals in Europe, the Americas and Asia. She received the State Prize for Visual Arts in 2023, the Finnish media art prize AVEK Award in 2018 and the prizes of SW Finland in 2017, Finnish Art Society in 1995 and the Aboa prize in 1994. She has been the Helsinki Festival Artist in 2005 and was nominated for both Ars Fennica and Carnegie Art Award prizes in 2010.