Spirit of North vol. 10

‘Spirit of North’ vol. 10
Rovaniemi Art Museum, 21.9.2019 – 26.1.2020

I had a day off in Rovaniemi and decided to spend it in one of my favourite places in town: the Korundi House of Culture. I prowled for the second time through the ‘Spirit of North’ vol. 10 exhibition, a collaboration of artists from Tohoku (Northern Japan) and Lapland.

The ‘Spirit of North’ cultural project, initiated by a group of artists from Tohoku as a means to cope with the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster that shook the region in 2011, is today an international program involving artists from Japan and various Nordic countries. The driving force of this program is to explore common ground in how spirituality is fathomed and expressed in Tohoku and other northern regions in the globe. The 10th volume of ‘Spirit of North’ spreads over three rooms at Korundi House and includes paintings, video art, performances, sculptures, installations and drawings.

​Artists/curators Yosiko Maruyama and Helena Junttila have put their hands, brains and hearts together to bring about a compelling show marked by an eerie hum. A sincere quest to explore and honour the domain of the spirit can be sensed throughout the works in the exhibition. One finds it a bit more tricky, though, to spot the ‘Northern’ aspect of the exhibition’s title in terms of content or form within the artworks, and it just seems to denote the origin of the artists in the exhibition.

Hiroaki Nakatsugawa, Light Shining Fleet, acrylic on canvas, 2013

​Korundi offered a program of art performances in parallel to the ‘Spirit of North’ exhibition. Last month at the opening night, when I visited the exhibition the first time, Titta Court and Auri Ahola premiered ‘Tykky’, their latest piece in collaboration. The artists dressed in what it looked like a patchwork of sleeping bag fabrics that obliterated the shape of their bodies and fuelled associations between the forms of humans and trees. Something magical took place during the performance: the piece’s slow pace, generous spaciousness, immersive music and unexpected forms brought to life the paintings by Japanese artist Hiroaki Nakatsugawa, also present in the same room, which, in turn, provided an unparalleled atmosphere for the performance piece.

​During my second visit to the show, now alone in the room, I took the time to digest more fully Nakatsugawa’s work. His almost monotone, gestural paintings are highly evocative, nevertheless, as great paintings usually do... (read more)