Tuula Närhinen: LOCAL
Photography, 2014-
In October 2014 and April 2016 I had the chance to work in residency at the Centre d'Art i Natura in Farrera, a tiny village in the Catalonian Pyrenees close to the border of Andorra. I attempted to capture visual and auditory sense impressions engendered by the movement of the winds, the colours of the rocks and vegetation, and the flow of the watercourses.
The work features particular geographical situations that embody and unfurl essential characteristics of the local topography and the environment I became part of. I let the turbulent mountain winds carry my DIY kite equipped with a video camera; painted and catalogued colour perceptions in an archive of water colours and photographs; extracted minerals from the rocks and used them as paint and followed the meandering creeks on their way from the high sources of melting snow through the meadows into the deep river valley. Walking, climbing and flying over the mountains turned my body to an instrument of observation as well: I felt the terrain under my feet, breathed in the air and absorbed the scenery through my eyes.
My endeavour is outrageously and foolishly ambitious: with the help of these little exercises in environmental geography I attempt to mediate sensibilities and sensations that are supposed to reveal no less than the soul of the landscape itself - or if you will - the (in)famous genius loci.
- Tuula Närhinen
Interview with Tessa Aarnisuo Tuula Närhinen
