Natural Shelter

Fiskars Village Art & Design Biennale 2019, Fiskars, Finland
May 19 – Sept 15 2019

“Natural Shelter”, commissioned by the Fiskars Village Art & Design Biennale and curator Jenni Nurmenniemi, was a collaboration between artist Laura Põld and poet Katrin Väli. For the exhibition “Beings with”, the artist-poet duo tackled relationships between humans and other animals. Both authors consider preserving biodiversity in today’s Estonia extremely important since the natural habitats are being destroyed under production of the so-called biological or alternative fuel. The starting point for the project was the awe they felt when seeing how skilfully birds construct their nests. Katrin Väli’s new writings focused on avian life and expressed the intriguing and mystical essence of living organisms. Her collection of poems, titled “Owl’s Nest”, was displayed as a continuous flow of text on three screens beside Laura’s bird-nest inspired ceramic sculptures. The installation spread out to two large grain containers at the Granary building in Fiskars. 

Photos by Paul Kuimet