Confluencas

Riikka Tauriainen creates an immersive space of memory and future: she weaves connections through the exhibition Protozone 2 – Continuity / Transpassing. Floating reliefs made of transparent PET hang from the ceiling of the room. The objects capture the shape of an undulating water surface. At the same time, they are reminiscent of digital renderings, liquid screens, bodies or partitions for protective devices.

The space-filling elements interact closely; with the plastic surface of the reliefs, images are distorted as light refracts on the PET and draws a play of light throughout the room – mirrored sunlight or projections. Confluencas by Tauriainen thinks in a fictional world between solid and fluid matter.

Riikka Tauriainen plays with opposites between the natural and the toxic, threat and well-being, human and non-human, inside and outside and between the intimate and the foreign, mixing these ambivalences and frictions while blurring the boundaries between into flow.

I explore the relationship of our bodies with the world around them. I refer to sources in queer feminist literature, such as the author Astrida Neimanis and her concept about “hydrofeminism”. This theory is based on the idea of the fluidity of our bodies and offers it as a force for emancipation: “Water, in other words, flows through and across difference.” (Astrida Neimanis) The focus of the work is materialist: how do ecofeminist and postcolonial practices approach critical materialism? How do we deal with toxic material? How does the foreign become the familiar?

Riikka Tauriainen born in Oulu, Northern Finland (FI), lives and works in Zurich. In her installations, videos and performances she is interested in historical narratives, gender issues, knowledge production and language. She navigates on the boundaries between art and science, between fact and fiction. Since 2018, Tauriainen has been working on the series of works “Hydrocommons,” which operates in a posthumanist world of ideas. It explores to what extent our kinship with other bodies can be understood as a deeply materialistic relationality. She Studied in Tallinn (Estonian Academy of Arts, BA photography), Essen (Folkwang University of the Arts, communication design), Berlin (Berlin Weissensee School of Art, Fine Arts / Sculpture) and Zurich (Zurich University of the Arts, MA Fine Arts). She taught among others at the Zurich University of the Arts and is currently teaching at the F+F School for Art and Design Zürich and the ETH Zurich.

Her works are exhibited internationally, including Bâtiment d‘art contemporain in Geneva, Siemens Sanat in Istanbul, Center for Contemporary Art in Plovdiv Bulgaria, NGbK Berlin, Helmhaus in Zurich and the Biennial for Time Based Art in Zagreb Croatia. She presented her latest work at the Swiss Art Awards in Basel 2019 and at her solo exhibition at SIC! Elephanthouse in Lucerne in 2020-2021.