HD Video, stereo sound, 2024
Duration 3 min 3 s
In Mothering, an adult daughter carries her mother on her back, struggling through an autumnal forest. Mothering refers to motherhood as an ongoing and changing active state of being and a caring, not necessarily tied to biological motherhood alone.
The Finnish title Äitiä (to mother) can be read from beginning to end and end to beginning – referring to the theme of the work as the turn of the caring relationship with the ageing of one’s parents. Filming the video, the acting has been done backwards and the movement has then been reversed. The handheld camera and the backward movement create a fragile quality in the way of walking, emphasizing the gestures of the aging body.
The chorus of the soundtrack repeats in a loop, like everyday life, days and years. There’s a similar loop in the process of ageing, life is layered and change is cyclical. The mother and daughter are attached to each other, to each other’s bodies.
Minna Suoniemi (b. 1972) is a Helsinki-based artist working with moving image and sound. Her practice draws from embodied experience, and she has worked on themes such as control, body, class and family. Her latest project examines the materiality of the ageing body and transgenerationional bodily experience of being in-excess and excessiveness. Her academic interests include transformative, artistic and arts-based pedagogical practices, questions of class in arts and education, embodied and feminist approaches towards knowing and researching.
Suoniemi’s work has been exhibited internationally and her work is represented in Finnish collections including EMMA, Kiasma and the Finnish State Art Collection. She has been invited for trustee positions i.e. The Finnish Arts Promotion Center and has worked as an artist and pedagogue in various Institutions. Since 2014 Suoniemi works as a University Lecturer in Aalto University, Department of Art and Media.
Mediabox is Forum Box gallery’s space dedicated to media art. The program is created in collaboration with AV-arkki.
There are three steps to the media art space Mediabox, but the work is also available for viewing on a tablet by request. Please don’t hestitate to contact our staff if Mediabox is inaccessible for you.