Iiris Kaarlehto & Inka Kynkäänniemi: Circa 2020

These two Is and H would be characters that are first present and then disappear or change into something else. I and H are not uniform, but share a time and place for a brief moment. I would be a character that uses technology. Like a bicycle or sandpaper, for example. H would be a character that technology is being used on, or the technology itself. H is the form and the measure.

I’s friends are building a lean-to on the seashore. I wanders around, the landscape is making I anxious. I is thinking about cruelty, hedgehogs that starve when they wake from their hibernation in the mild January weather. I is scouring the ground for medicinal plants for the bath water.

When I was young, all stories were about desire. It was difficult to find desire in the real world. I was plagued by daydreams about freedom and emancipation. Many of them were daydreams of futures gone past. I wanted to be a vagabond and that is what I became. I did not leave their home for forty years.

In the exhibition, consisting of a video work and sculpture and object installations, Iiris Kaarlehto and Inka Kynkäänniemi use speculative fiction, exaggeration and humour to approach images of future life, especially transport, travel and artisthood, and ponder the hope, terror and disbelief associated with the future and the passage of time. The themes of carrying each other, care and interdependencies are a key thread running through the cooperation between Kaarlehto and Kynkäänniemi.

Iiris Kaarlehto (b. 1987) and Inka Kynkäänniemi (b. 1992) are a Helsinki-based artist duo, who has been working together since 2014.

The exhibition and the artists have received support from the Kone Foundation and the Paulo Foundation.