veera nivalainen
photographic artist / veera.nivalainen@gmail.com / @veeranivalainen
still pouring
from
the soft spot (ongoing)
Still pouring from the soft spot is a performance-installation giving space to sensitivity as multi-sensorial and visceral. Through dance and performance art as well as lens-based animation it aims to materialise emotional labour as not measurable, but experiential work. As supporting, holding, nurturing, staying silent, being in process, bursting, dwelling, cleaning. The project is based on curious, open and experimental collaboration between media- and dance art. Our aim is to make space for an open and soft reflection on emotional labour and sensitive, emotional bodies.
Still pouring from the soft spot is a multi-diciplinary collaboration between dance artist Sonjis Laine and photographic artist Veera Nivalainen. The continuous project takes different forms in different spaces and occasions. Our work on emotional labour and sensitivity has grown into an important practice of friendship, collegiality and taking care.
honey, milk and eggs (2021)
In When Species Meet (2008) feminist scholar Donna Haraway asks what they touch, when they touch a dog, reminding that the human body consists of only 10% of human genomes and the rest is bacteria, fungi and protists. Similarly, Nivalainen asks what they touch, when they touch an egg? What separates them? Can they merge?
Honey, Milk and Eggs is a photographic body of work. It investigates the body as a soft, fluid and informative material frame on the plate of a scanner. An image becomes a fantasy: a place where anything is possible and even the body can take new forms. The work is aiming to take an empathetic approach suggesting a reciprocal relationship between the spectator and their subject. It aims to get close and in touch, as well as reflects on what it means to exist as a human, an animal and and an organic being.