Maaliskuu 7, 2025
Kihwa-Endale ja Sophia Mitiku työskentelevät molemmat pidempien projektien parissa, joissa käsitellään kodin, ihmissuhteiden, kansanperinteen, muistojen ja entisöinnin teemoja. Korealais-etiopialaisina ja länsimaissa kasvaneina heidän käsityksensä itsestään ja ympäristöstään on jatkuvassa neuvottelussa sekä toistensa että vanhempiensa kulttuurien ja kotimaiden kanssa. Maahanmuuton myötä heidän käsityksensä kodista on jatkuvasti mukautunut ja uudelleen muotoutunut.
Kihwa-Endale työskentelee parhaillaan soolonäyttelynsä the bird people parissa, johon kuuluu sarja savesta ja hiilestä tehtyjä maalauksia. Teoksissa käytetään luonnonmateriaaleja Korean, Etiopian ja Suomen maisemista, ja ne heijastavat hänen muistojaan ja päiväuniaan. Hänen taiteellinen praktiikkansa sisältää myös spoken word -runoutta, jossa hän käyttää henkilökohtaisia kokemuksiaan lähtökohtana laajempien yhteiskunnallisten kysymysten, kuten imperialismin ja ilmastonmuutoksen, ymmärtämiseen.
Mitiku tutkii tulevalla albumillaan, all sickness is homesickness, ilmaisun aukkoja, joita syntyy kielihäviön ja kulttuurisen ristiriidan, siirtolaisuuden ja diasporakokemusten myötä. Ääni on hänen työkalunsa muistin kuntouttamiseen tunne- ja sosiaalisten haavojen hoitamiseksi. Hän käyttää kenttä-äänityksiä tallentaakseen ympäristön ääniä, juurruttaen teoksensa konkreettisiin ympäristöihin. Muistosta tulee materiaa, ja äänelle löytyy kohde.
Kun Kihwa-Endalen ja Sophia Mitikun työskentelyprosessit yhdistyvät, syntyy vuoropuhelu keskeneräisten ajatusten ja kysymysten välille, mikä voi kasvaa laajemmaksi ja syvemmäksi pohdintojen kudelmaksi.
Kihwa-Endale and Sophia Mitiku are both working on longer projects that explore themes of home, relationships, folklore, memory, and repair. Being Korean-Ethiopian and growing up in Western countries, their understanding of themselves and their environment is in constant negotiation with each other, as well as with the cultures and countries of their parents. Through migration, their sense of home has been continuously adapted and reconfigured—always in a continuum state.
Kihwa-Endale is currently working on her solo exhibition 'the bird people', which includes a series of paintings made of clay and charcoal. These paintings use earthly materials from respective geographies of Korea, Ethiopia and Finland - depicting her memories and daydreams. Her practice includes spoken word poetry that uses personal experiences as a segue to understand greater social issues, such as imperialism and global warming.
In Mitiku's upcoming record 'all sickness is homesickness' she explores gaps of expression caused by language loss and cultural dissonance, displacement and diaspora experiences through immigration. Sound is her tool for rehabilitating memory as a means to tend to emotional and social wounds. She uses field recordings to archive ambient sounds and voices, grounding her work in tangible environments. Memory becomes material, and sound finds an object.
Bringing their processes together creates a dialogue of unfinished thoughts and questions that might extend into a wider and more nuanced network of reflection.
What does this exhibition and its theme mean to you? What made you want to include your work in it?
It felt special to be part of this collection of transcultural sentiments of home and to have this point of connection and reflection in this exhibition. We often try to find answers individually, because our backgrounds seem different from each other, but this reminds us how we’re all kind of pulling at the same strings and have a lot in relation with each other.
What does home mean to you personally? Has your understanding of home changed over time or during different phases of your life?
Our experience of home comes through building and maintaining relationships - through repair, return, or continuation. Maybe in that sense there is no definite answer as people move and places change…but our practice of home deepens with time.
In the exhibition, home is viewed as a physical, spiritual, and emotional space. Which of these perspectives does your work connect with most strongly, and why?
Our perspective or focus of the three aren’t particularly separate - they all enforce each other as different mediums towards a center or guiding force. Maybe in the way senses work, when our touch with one feels weaker or stronger they also compensate for each other.
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