Green Land – Blooming City

For our forefathers living on the savannah greenery meant food, water and protection. Our cells “remember” this, even if we now live in cities. All of us need birdsong, flowering trees and life-bearing greenness. On the anniversary of our Finnish independence the Kerava Art Museum, through this exhibition, celebrates the good energy created by nature.

The exhibition includes plant installations, photographs, 3D-animation, moss walls and air purifying green design elements. In addition to top names in Finnish art, the exhibition includes part of, the Los Angelean artist, Jennifer Steinkamp’s dazzling Botanic-installation, which was seen spreading through the New York cityscape last spring. As the clock neared midnight in May 2016, all of the digital screens, in Times Square New York, were transformed into a pulsating sea of flowers.

Steinkamp’s work refers to a classification and human centric way of thinking present in the 1700’s, where nature was seen as a pantry for humans and a stimulant producer for the people. The developer of the plant and animal classification system Carl von Linné (1707─78) and his student, Pehr Kalm (1716─79) also known as the father of Finnish horticulture believed, that plants were intermediaries of divine providence. Plants grew in places where they could best benefit the health and well-being of people.

The interest in botany went hand in hand with the ”conquest of new continents”. Burgeoning kalmias and other plant species brought back to Finland from Pehr Kalm’s explorations, can be seen in Jan-Erik Andersson’s plant installation. In Salla Tykkä’s video artwork, beauty and colonisation become entwined. In the video a giant waterlily, which European explorer’s found in South America at the beginning of the 1800’s, blooms. The nightly spectacle of the blossoming, in the confines of a greenhouse, was first experienced in 1849. Its scientific name, Victoria amazonica, was given to the lily in honour of Queen Victoria.

Today, nature conservation is not justified by the well-being of humans, but with the well-being of nature. The German Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), widely regarded as the man who launched ecology and the creator of an exceptional series of lithographs depicting the art of nature, believed that humans with their culture and belief systems were an integral and indistinguishable part of nature, not its master, nor its servant. When sketching an image of the radiozoa, Haeckel considered the movement of his hand to be a kin to the movement of the protozoa.

The exhibition is accompanied by the publishing of Maahenki’s book, Vihreä päänsärky (Green Headache), where the renowned selection of writers ponder the relationship between nature, humans and art, as well as introduce green art as a new concept. According to professor Yrjö Sepänmaa the use of live plants is one of the hallmarks of green art. The used material is alive or at least organic like plants, but he points out, that plants can also be imitated with artificial flowers, trees and grass.

According to Sepänmaa green walls, green roofs and more widely green areas can also be considered green art. Taking part in the Kerava Art Museum exhibition are moss walls created by the Hyvinkää based Vihersisustus Luwasan (Green Interior Design Luwasan). Also on show are intelligent green walls that purify the air and bring nature inside, created by the Jyväskylä based Naava Ltd. Artist Hanna Husberg also considers this theme in her artwork The world indoors (2015). The plants used in her installation purify interior air and remind us that ” We are all breathers – from our first breath to the last.”

Mimicking the theme of the exhibition and the book Vihreä päänsärky (Green Headache) is the Blooming City Green Seminar (Viherseminaari Kukkiva kaupunki), which is being organised in the Keuda Aimo hall in Kerava on the 15th of June, 12.30–18. What is the city in 2050? Hear the latest visions and take part in the conversation.