Resonance, 2019
glass fibre, plaster, textile, sound system, electronics
125 x 282 x 125 cm
Anna Estarriola’s exhibition Hideouts presents a curious world where the original and rich imagining of possibilities combines with precise expression. The exhibition features new artworks, which combine several forms of artistic expression.
Combining the moving image, sound and sculpture in varied ways in her work, the artist explores the boundaries of perceiving reality, the phenomena of the natural sciences and communication. She is fascinated, perplexed and preoccupied by creatures, the moving image, and moving bodies and objects. In her oeuvre, the artist considers, among other things, all the aspects that we do not know about and the kinds of realities that may be hidden from our gaze. If we look closely enough, could it be possible to observe something of them? In places, the viewer’s gaze comes microscopically close to its subject after which it moves far away, to the starry sky.
In Hideouts Estarriola is interested in phenomena such as resonance, subsidence and transition, which she approaches intuitively and through rich imaginative thought. Her works offer viewers puzzling situations and moving encounters. Considering simultaneous nested realities and the experience of being inside another have served as the conceptual starting point of the exhibition, being included in one way or another in all the works on display.
Muffled proceeds from a biopsy sample of the artist’s own skin which is magnified 2.000 times in relation to its original size. In Guided, which combines sound, moving image and elements of sculpture, the viewer meets a small character wearing headphones. There are headphones for the viewer also, so the viewer and the creature can both listen to an ongoing audio guide.
Estarriola’s works are characterised by an exhilarating equality of creatures and encounters and the strong simultaneous presence of conceptual and experiential elements. In Resonance, three figures dressed in orange coveralls are peeking inside another larger one. Sounds are heard from within the spacious hollow creature. Both dissonant and consonant voices resonate in the sculptures, making them vibrate gently.
Anna Estarriola (born in 1980 in Catalonia) holds degrees of Master of Fine Arts from the Department of Sculpture of the University of Barcelona (2004) and the Department of Time and Space Arts of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki (2009). Works by her are currently on display at the Oulu Art Museum. They have also been seen in recent years at, among other venues, the OpenART Public Art Biennale in Örebro, Sweden (2019); the Mänttä Art Festival (2019); Tallinn Art Hall, Estonia (2018); the collections exhibition of the EMMA Espoo Museum of Modern Art (2018); the Watermans Art Centre, London (2018); Gallery Sinne (2018); the Turku Biennale (2017); the Norrköping Art Museum (2017); Max Estrella, Madrid (2017); the Pori Art Museum (2017), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma (2016). Anna Estarriola was awarded the AVEK Award of the Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture in 2015. In the spring of 2020, Anna Estarriola will work for six months in the ISCP residency programme in New York.
