The wild strawberry smells of childhood summers and the lingonberry tastes how healthy it is. The rowan tree carries with it traditions spanning centuries, while the lupine spreads out, taking cue from humans. If a dandelion could, what all would it tell?
For the Spiritus series of artworks, photographer Venla Kaasinen has photographed Nordic plants that hold cultural, medicinal and personal significances. Kaasinen aims to get to know the plants as deeply as possible, reading texts ranging from scientific publications to literary works and spending time moving around the plants’ habitats, photographing and collecting them. Finally, the film negatives are processed by immersing them in a broth made from each photographed plant. The plants leave their mark on the images, modifying and even destroying the film emulsion. Depending on the plant, they may create very different traces and color variations, or even completely eliminate the representational quality of the image. She works the plants like an alchemist, distilling their deepest essence. The aim is to bring the core, character or spirit – the spiritus – of the plants into the images.
Venla Kaasinen (b. 1992) is a photographer from Central Finland, who primarily works with analog photography. She is particularly fascinated by various experimental methods and cameraless photography. The physicality of photography is at the center of her practice, and through it Kaasinen expresses her post-humanist and new materialist worldview, working in collaboration with other-than-human beings. The process is full of chance and uncontrollability, and the same end result could not be achieved without the involvement of other species.
Kaasinen graduated as a visual artist from the Turku Arts Academy in 2023 and will begin master’s studies in photography at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden in the fall of 2026.
The Finnish Cultural Foundation and the TOP Foundation have supported Kaasinen’s work on the project.
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Jyväskylän Taiteilijaseura ry
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Puhelinnumero
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