Iona Roisin on the Complexity of Language

Iona Roisin is a British artist and poet based in Helsinki. Working across moving image and text, their practice is interested in ways of making, difficulty, intimacy, failure and the insufficiency of language. Iona graduated from The Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki and The Cass School of Art, London Metropolitan University, London. 

Iona spent three months in New York at the Triangle Visual Arts Residency in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood. Their stay was supported by us here at the FCINY, along with the Finnish Cultural Foundation. The Institute’s Kia Standertskjöld-Nordenstam sat down for a virtual discussion with the artist to learn more about their creative processes and inspirations. 

“What are your reflections on your time in New York? Have these shifted from your initial expectations?” 

Honestly it was hard to know what to expect. It felt extremely surreal coming to America for the first time, especially after several years of pandemic, and seven years of living in Helsinki. I was quite dazed by it all and it took me some time to adjust… Not to mention how bizarre it is to see all these things that previously only existed in tv and movies. And in relation to that, I think many things felt heavier or more saturated, the presence of history, the presence of popular culture, etc. 

I found it harder than expected to settle into a workflow here, there’s so many options for things to do and see. I wish I had consciously geared my time towards experimentation, research and gathering, rather than getting stuck into the meat of a project. But it’s always interesting to see the ways that residencies force you to adapt your process and overall it’s been incredible to have the opportunity to spend a long time in one huge and varied place. 

“I read that your practice attempts to “negotiate the expression of impossibility and the impossibility of expression”. What a beautifully melancholic premise that is! How is this visible in your work?”

Y’know I find it really hard to write these statements that encapsulate a whole practice. For some years I was using this as an umbrella phrase for where I always find myself working, but I shifted away from using it because it felt a bit too grand and ‘impossibility’ feels so definitive. I know language is fraught, but it’s almost all we have, and I hope my work leans into that difficulty but in a semi-hopeful way, like in spite of it all it keeps striving to say something.

I think what attracted me to this idea is how it loops, or that it’s a kind of ouroboros. My work is also looping, stumbling then standing up again. Initially I was considering this idea through trauma and other experiences that challenge language and comprehension, that make it difficult or near ‘impossible’ to convey the depths of the experience to another. These days I see it in a much more daily way, that actually it is just so hard to express things, and so much of art making includes a pressure to define, to have a stance or an opinion, to impart knowledge even. Most of the time I find myself left mainly with questions. 

Like even with clarity, precision and access to language, people rely so much on subtext in their interactions. How often do we presume to be understood, and to understand? How often are we hesitant to ask for clarification? Personally, I’m often very confused in my day-to-day life, and I struggle to understand and remember things, so this perpetual loop is something that comes very naturally to me and my way of seeing the world, and so by extension to my practice. 

I think grounding my work in this pursuit also allows me space to fail, and allows space for silence. In these last few years something to do with language has opened up in me, some kind of flexibility… Or maybe it’s just an acceptance of the difficulty, rather than the urge to fight against that. 

“You also experiment with failure and the insufficiency of language. How did this idea come up for you and why is this something close to your heart?” 

Neither one of these things I set out to work with intentionally but they came up so organically in my projects that at some point I managed to see them as a connecting thread throughout my practice.  

They exist as ways to integrate process into my finished works, like there’s almost always something self-reflexive in them, something to do with how the piece was made, or the process of sitting down with the material. In some ways they are often works about work. 

Over the years I’ve managed to embrace this way of working and feel quite comfortable there, working in an intuitive way rather than from the position of an ‘expert’. Of course those aren’t mutually exclusive things, but I think arts education pushes you in this direction and at times I get really tangled up in that. So being able to integrate my failures and process into my works helps me find a position from which to start from.

The insufficiency of language I answered a bit above with this ‘impossibility of expression’ comment, but I also believe that it allows for there to be holes, miscommunication, confusion. That precision isn’t the most important thing, just trying is enough sometimes. I see it as a way of not striving for resolve and resolution but as a way of working with openness, and yeah, writing failure into the fabric of the works. In part it is also a way of trying to acknowledge the things that I find challenging about making work and existing in the world. I often feel like making doesn’t come naturally to me, but I’m still persisting. 

“Some other concepts you work with are intimacy, difficulty, consent and complicity. Has the New York scene or the enigma of the city impacted your further development of these themes, and if so, how?”

Hmm not in a way I could really put my finger on. I had expected that the sensory experience of being in the city coupled with spending a lot of time thinking about and watching rape revenge films for my residency project would have affected my nervous system and made me hyper sensitive to surrounding issues (e.g. consent/ complicity) but that didn’t actually happen.

I think that intimacy and difficulty are themes that are present in literally everything I make, and that didn’t change here, but spending so much time alone definitely affected my relationship to intimacy on a personal level. But I guess this question is about if the city helped me learn about these themes and I don’t think it did. 

“What is inspiring you right now? How has your time in NYC and the US scene affected this?”

Being totally on my own (almost to the point of isolation) has allowed for some space to open up in my life and I have found myself being slower and more self-reflective in this period. I rarely experience loneliness and for the first time in a while I’ve been faced with that feeling and been unable to do anything for it, besides sit with it. 

I’ve been attending some meditation sessions which has been a nice, low-threshold way of being around others, and something I would like to bring back to Helsinki with me, as well as do on future residencies. It feels very important to try and make space for nothingness as an artist, to not give in to the pressure to fill every waking minute with something ‘productive’. Downtime is very important to me anyway, but it felt especially needed here, working with difficult subjects in a new environment. In addition to needing to learn how to work in a new way for my residency project, I feel that in these last few months I’ve been trying to learn how to take care of myself in a new way. I haven’t always succeeded, but it feels precious to be trying. 

Other things I have loved are taking the boat around town (especially because the residency apartment is close to one stop, total highlight going under all these amazing bridges), spending time on the roof terrace looking out into the city and contemplating how small I am, going to bookshops for leisurely browsing and reading lots of poetry, I love how there’s always something good to see at a cinema somewhere and I’ve been watching a lot of movies both out and at home. I’ve enjoyed working in libraries and especially in the incredibly beautiful study room in the huge public library in the city. I’ve also attended several poetry classes, online and at the Poetry Project and Brooklyn Poets, which has been a great way to open up my writing practice. I’ve been very lucky.