Suvi Vepsä & Egle Oddo: notes from the field / muistiinpanoja kentältä

Art historian Suvi Vepsä and artist Egle Oddo have been collaborating within Vepsä’s doctoral research since 2021. Their joint action started during the realisation of an Evolutionary garden on the occasion of the XXV Mänttä Art Festival. The garden is still part of the public domain of the City.

In Oddo’s Evolutionary gardens, edible, decorative and wild species coexist, blurring the boundaries between agriculture, urban green areas, and seemingly untouched wildlands. Some of the planted varieties of the same genera can naturally produce new variations and produce unusual biotic assemblages. Most species chosen by Oddo are Finnish landrace varieties. They carry long histories of situated naturalcultural entanglements between evolution and human cultivation, which has made them genetically diverse and therefore more likely to adapt to the changing climate than their highly cultivated relatives. Following the theme of the exhibition, To Err is Human, Oddo has also put to the ground seeds that have only a small chance of surviving in the local environment. Such a conscious mistake forms a new temporal layer on the work: the seeds now sleeping in the soil, waiting for the right conditions, might in the future turn into important pioneer species, as Nordic food production has to adapt to the inevitably warming climate.

Vepsä and Oddo have been observing the changes and interactions in the garden for four years. In Aleksanterin Linna they present a cross-section from their archives, including notes, images and raw materials that have been emerging during their research, as well as new material collected by Vepsä during their one-month stay in the Serlachius Residency

—

Suvi Vepsä is a doctoral researcher in Art history at the University of Turku. In their research, they examine the potential of multispecies art in creating new ways of being, doing, and knowing, on the threshold of the ecological and ethico-political issues of the Anthropocene. They are interested in care and different forms of collaboration in artmaking and research practices. The research is supported by the Kone Foundation.

Egle Oddo is a visual artist. Interested in operational realism, meant as the presentation of the functional sphere in an aesthetic arrangement and its inter-relations, she combines different art disciplines. In her pieces industrial production morphs towards delicate handcraft, life forms appear and emerge out of sculptures and objects, film photography appropriate digital images, precious edible minerals and ancestral recipes are served as part of ritual meals. Her research is presently supported by The Finnish Cultural Foundation.