Riitta Ikonen Embraces Environment

Riitta Ikonen's work threads together memory, myth, imagination and an anthropomorphic view of the natural world. She mediates interaction between people and their natural environment that materializes as performance, video, wearable sculptures and photographic portraiture. Ikonen's residency at the Triangle Art Association in Dumbo from October to December 2020 is part of the Finnish Cultural Foundation's collaboration with international residency programs. This residency period is specifically catered to a US-based Finnish artist, due to travel restrictions resulted from COVID-19.

Sometimes collaborations and friendships begin in unexpected ways. Like in 2011, when artist Riitta Ikonen typed the words “Norway + Grannies + Photographer" on her computer's search engine and found out about the work of Norwegian photographer Karoline Hjorth. And the rest, as they say, is history. A decade later the duo continues to foster their socially engaged and environmentally conscious project Eyes as Big as Plates.

 Through their collaboration, Ikonen and Hjorth turn the spotlight on the silent knowledge of older people. The artists engage with people around the world to learn about their relationship with habitat and how it has evolved through the years. The culmination of each dialogue, which typically starts serendipitously, is a custom-made sculptural costume that the collaborator wears for a portrait in a surrounding meaningful to them.

While being exhibited widely, and shared online eagerly, the portraits also ended up in a book published in 2017. The beautiful publication was nominated as the best "first photobook" in the world at the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards and sold out soon after. Now the time is ripe for the Eyes as Big as Plates Vol II. The book will consist of sixty portraits photographed in South Korea, Tasmania, Outer Hebrides, Senegal, Iceland, Greenland and Norway over the past four years.

Every portrait in the new volume will be accompanied by a text based on an informal interview with the respective collaborator. At the Triangle Arts Association’s residency, Ikonen will start writing the final texts, as well as the field notes section of the book. The publication goes to print in the Winter of 2021 and will be launched internationally in the Spring of 2021.