8.8.-6.9.2020
MUU Studio, Lönnrotinkatu 33, Helsinki, Finland
Opening ceremony on Friday, 7 August 2020, from 17:00 to 19:00. Welcome!
Ouroboros is a paradox: a serpent that lives by eating its own tail. A creature that exists by destroying itself. Ouroboros commonly symbolises the fundamental connectedness and inevitable cycle of birth and destruction, of life and death.
The Ouroboros is an ancient symbol whose earliest known instance is in the Egyptian Book of the Dead discovered the Valley of the Kings. Since then, the serpent has served as a symbol of unity in many contexts. Its counterpart in Scandinavian mythology is the World Serpent, Jörmungandr.
In Saijonkivi’s Ouroboros constituent components of life pass through each other, are eaten, born, disappear, are transformed and return. Everything changes yet remains the same. The video is an eternal loop, the end is the beginning, and just like a serpent eating its tale, the work too seizes its tail and starts again. Epochs alternate like seasons, silence alternates with the cacophonic choir of life, visual peace with chaos.
Ouroboros lives, throbs, flows like water. Digital life is reborn, again and again.
Anni Saijonkivi has chosen 3D animation as her medium because of the possibilities and meanings it offers in term of content and symbolism. Integrating relatively unedited recorded sounds and footage with a completely artificial digital form and sounds, Saijonkivi crams two worlds into one and the same work. She sees the conflict of technologies as an indispensable part of the inner logic of symbolism in her work.
Anni Saijonkivi is a Turku-based multimedia artist. Since graduating from the Turku Arts Academy in 2015 her primary mediums have been video and sound. Probing the boundaries between the organic and the artificial, Saijonkivi creates visualisations of abstract concepts. The power of her art arises from her interest in conflicts, opposition and extremes. Bringing opposites into conflict she searches for new, unknown territories, zones of uncertainty.
The soundtrack of the work was created by musician Jani Puistovaara.
The project has been generously supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
(2020-07-31)

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