EMDAL x PELTOLA

~ Long distance Collaboration and research project during Covid 2020. Finland ~Denmark.

-------------------------------

CONCEPT:

Signe Emdal and Riikka Peltola´s research process is based on the concept of plant intelligence. Their concept is strongly inspired by the book: Brilliant Greens by Stefano Mancuso and Alessandra Viola, and how plants are communicating through several types of interfaces. Especially two plant senses caught their interest: sight (in plant world sense of light) and touch (in plant world sense of hearing) - These two senses are in the center of the artists final two pieces.

BIO Riikka Peltola (FI):

Rikka Peltola is a knit artist from North Tampere (Finland). Her focus is to create visual textile concepts using both industrial machine knitting and analogical hand knitting. In her practice, Riikka has been researching arctic garment making traditions and she is particularly interested in garment appreciation and how can we think of them as precious objects.

ART PIECE:

The crochet sculpture METAMORPHOSIS is a representation of plant resilience and its elegant strategies on how to adapt in changing circumstances for catching the light, getting hydrated, or finding nutrients from the soil.
Riikka´s Interest in plant adaptation guided her to positive Phototropism (Tropis=Turning Photo=light) - a term for a plant reaching toward the source of light by stretching and bending itself. In her own words, delicate see-through crochet layers float on top of each other imitating plant motion and growth. There are limitless ways to look at it from different perspectives. It is constantly turning, twisting, and bending.

PROCESS/ COLOURS:

Riikka Peltola:

“My artistic working process is tightly attached to the plant world. The fiber used on my piece comes from pine trees. It is delicate, yet strong twisted natural color paper yarn. I wanted to see the growing process with my eyes and feel it in my hands, so I ended up making work using the slow crochet technique. Working with this technique is meditating and organic as the structure repeats itself and hands are in repetitive movement. The shape grows hyperbolically from the first center loop to the edge stitches. Metamorphosis describes this developing process from bud to blooming creature”

-------------------------------

BIO Signe Emdal (DK):

Signe Emdal is a Danish textile artist focused on translating color, texture, and symbolic heritage into new artistic objects and spaces. Her solid background in crafted textiles has shaped her awareness to a more sensitive and technical approach to fibers, colors and methods with the intention of providing emotional sensory experiences.

ART PIECE:

INFINITY ROOT: This hand looping mohair sculpture constructed on a wooden tapestry loom is a result of Signe´s fascination with plants & mechanisms of communication and collaboration through touch - it is a way of messaging other plants and species about important information. As Signe told us, the sensitivity of these systems is incredible, often invisible to the human eye, yet so much greater level of subtleness and understanding of circular systems. The plant´s intelligent strategies are designed to sustain on earth for millions of years - I call this sentient intelligence.

PROCESS & COLOURS:

Signe Emdal:

“The process was slow and meditative and the color gradience emerged along the way from my communication with Riikka. We started out with natural earthy tones of colors, but we wanted to also add one highlight colour. Red became our choice. Red is the colour of the root chakra in Indian philosophy, located in the lower root of the human body. We chose this colour intuitively together, and the red color ended up representing plant life/death and ALL life/death/love on earth- in general. Shortly after, I lost my father. This project gave me purpose, hope, support, and energetic strength and we are truly all connected”.

-------------------------------