Fictional Frictions

Fictional Frictions, located at the Mugaksa Temple and curated by Jenni Nurmenniemi, consists of three new commissions and two context-specific iterations of recent artworks by South Korean and Finnish artists. Their sculptural or sound-based installations open up spaces for questioning number of imagined borders: namely those between the past and the present, individual and collective, micro- and macrocosm. In subtle negotiation with the architecture and environment of the temple, the artworks form poetic-political entanglements that highlight co-dependencies and continuums instead of ruptures,
breaks and clearly defined borders.
The questions that bring these works of art into co-existence have to do with entangled loops of personal and collective histories. In their diverse ways, the artworks stir the sands of time both quite literally and symbolically. Through diverse material agencies, instead of using conventional narrative strategies, they pose questions on how it is possible to relate to collectively and historically significant events, or come to terms with massive transformations that are happening at present, on the level of the individual experience.
Juxtaposing human and geological timescales, and looking into the ways in which individual entities compose, or become to represent, larger patterns and wholes are critical undercurrents of the exhibition.
Throughout the exhibition, the personal and affective are inseparably entangled with the collective and systemic aspects of life – and mediated by diverse forms of language.