Tuula Närhinen talks about her work at KuvA’s Research Days on Tuesday, December 13, as part of a larger discussion on the relationship between artistic research, aesthetics and the philosophy of science. A video of her conference paper Phenomenotechnique in Visual Art Practise - A hands-on approach towards embodied epistemologies
Wednesday, December 14 2016: Tuula Närhinen, visual artist and Doctor of Fine Arts, is elected the recipient of the 2016 Visual Artist Award of the Artists' Association of Finland. See a video documentation of the award granting event.
And a video clip of the artist interviewed on her studio at the Harakka Island.
VISUAL SCIENCE AND NATURAL ART
- A study on the pictorial agency of natural phenomena
Public Examination of Doctoral Thesis in Fine Arts (See a video documentation of the event)
24.9.2016 at 1:00 pm in SES auditorium Kino K-13, Kanavakatu 12, 00160 Helsinki
Examiner: professor Yrjö Haila, Chairman: professor Mika Elo
Tuula Närhinen’s doctoral research is built around an artistic practice that explores tracings and (photo)graphic recordings created by waves, rain and seawater. Re-adapting instruments derived from natural science, she constructs visual interfaces that enable us to move beyond the explicit and to grasp the unfurling of a world invisible to the naked eye.
Närhinen’s project considers the inherent visual potential in naturally occurring events. The thesis includes four exhibitions on the theme of water: Clapotis (2009), Seawatercolours (2012), Touch of Rain (2013) and Baltic Sea Plastique (2014). The artworks exhibit the making of the pictorial representations. The works emerge from interactions with water and result in gallery installations that, alongside the yielded graphs and artefacts, showcase the methods of inscribing and the devices implemented. The poetics of the practice arise from the corporeal enactment and the exposition of the medial translation. The artworks serve as case studies for further analysis of the cognitive and epistemic underpinnings of visual representation.
In the written component of the thesis, Närhinen discusses aspects of visual knowledge in broader terms. Informed by the disciplines of science studies, natural history and philosophy her research compares and draws parallels between the instrumental practices of natural science and visual art, with an emphasis on optical technologies. The thesis focuses on pragmatic analogies between the scientific and artistic ways of knowing in order to explicate and contextualise methods of aesthetic meaning-making and to provide for a critical approach to the study of the phenomenal world.
Tuula Närhinen (b. 1967) is a visual artist based in Helsinki. Närhinen graduated from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki (MFA), and from the University of Technology (M.Sc. in Architecture). Her works have been exhibited in museums, galleries and other venues in Finland and abroad.
A pdf version can downloaded free from the HELDA-database:
http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-7131-16-9
The doctoral research is published in print. Copies of the book can be bought at the Unigrafia webstore http://shop.unigrafia.fi/publisher/taideyliopisto/
Tuula Närhinen: L'origine du monde - échographie endo-vaginale - projection anamorphique
INTIMENTISSIMA 2016 A project by Paul-Armand Gette - group exhibition, Paris, France