Photograph: Mari Mäkiranta, Adaptation II, 2024.

Text by the exhibition curator Elisa Alaluusua:

Coleman Projects is delighted to present On the Edge, a group exhibition of eight artists from Finnish Lapland curated by Elisa Alaluusua.
 
This group of artists live and work in Finnish Lapland where nature can be harsh and distances challenging. The climate crisis is upon them. They are situated on the edge of the world, on the edge of Europe with a long border between Finland and Russia. They are literally, metaphorically and existentially on the edge.
 
As an alternative for peripheral silence and remote discourses, the group highlights the capacity to cross boundaries and work on the edges, be that in the geographical North or in their art practice. They find potential and tangible as well as spiritual content in northern circumferences.
 
The artists in the exhibition practice on the edges of more than one technique or media. They combine painting and drawing or printmaking and 3D work, or other materials and approaches. Art activism meets photography, boundaries – or edges – are broken and redefined in these works. Art is an intervention in the public space, a play with the lived details of the environment. Meaning is found in everyday experiences and objects; the body is lost in the landscape and new understanding gained through physical contact and settling into spaces.
 
Being situated on the edge shifts our focus and draws attention to boundaries that we cross constantly. Through our edge-defining practices we acknowledge human action as part of nature and trace the undefinable threshold between wilderness and the built environment. We map out places and transcribe time as we move forward.
 
The exhibition explores what it feels like to live on the edge in today’s world when unthinkable things can happen – yet you keep going and exploring though art.
 
Dr. Elisa Alaluusua
 
This group of artists are members of the professional body, Artists’ Association of Lapland*, and come from different disciplines.