Mirrored

Mirrored' is the catalogue of the eponymous exhibition at the Nordic Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, featuring works by six artists from different generations: Siri Aurdal, Nina Canell, Charlotte Johannesson, Jumana Manna, Pasi 'Sleeping' Myllymäki, and Mika Taanila. The publication presents newly-commissioned essays for each of the artists, who all share an experimental approach. For the older generation, it takes the form of module-based sculptures, translations of textile crafts into computer animations, or performative actions with the camera as their instrument. Material-based processes and social issues also preoccupy the younger generation, whose cinematic montage techniques, sculptural displacements of spatial perception, or explorations of power relationships claim the pavilion?s open architecture. The use of the allegory of the mirror is intended to move the focus of the discussion away from the characterization of art in accordance with national boundaries. Instead, the emphasis is on the participating artists, and how their practices illuminate the various ways in which boundaries can be, and are, dissolved and crossed. The exhibition and this book function as a loop in which figuration, material, technology, and execution process gradually succeed one another.