Hydrocommons

In 2022 for the 41st time the ZF Kunststiftung has awarded a grant in the visual arts. This year Riikka Tauriainen (born 1979) will be living and working as Artist in Residence in the tower studio of the ZF Kunststiftung with a view across Lake Constance. Tauriainen grew up in Finland and lives in Zurich. Her installations, videos and performances show her interest for history, postcolonial theories and gender issues. She is constantly moving at the boundaries between art and science, and between fact and fiction.

At Lake Constance Riikka Tauriainen will continue working on the work grouping Hydrocommons. The work grouping, to which Confluencas, River Oracle and Intimacy of Strangers belong, is based on the idea of fluidity of bodies, as formulated by the philosopher Astrida Neimanis in Bodies of Water. Neimanis is the founder of the Hydrofeminismus, which plays an important role in the work of Riikka Tauriainen and was already the central reference for Intimacy of Strangers in 2018.

“In Hydrocommons I explore the relationship of our bodies to the world around them. It is no accident that during my time in residence I will have a studio with a view of Lake Constance, through which the Rhine flows. The river represents an environment in continual flux, a place of change, where nothing seems fixed or static,” says Riikka Tauriainen. “Water flows, streams, swashes, and surges through bodies, buildings, and materials through pipes and lines, rivers and oceans. Water flows through and across the differences. With every sip that we drink we become a part of the global water cycle that flows through us and all species. Not only chemical processes occur in water, but also evolutionary and cultural ones. Everything flows. Nothing remains the same — and yet there is a connection. Water covers the greatest part of our blue planet, marks borders and shorelines, but above all creates connections.”

Of one thing the artist with Finnish roots is certain: “The subtleties of involvement through our sensory, objective and psychological states can create embodied experiences that arouse a world of imagination, emotions and physical complexity.” In her installations, videos and performance she develops spaces for reflection, multi-facetted and full of poesy. She lets visitors dive into a world of imagination and new perspectives: “How would our world look if we as fluid bodies, as Bodies of Water, were conscious of our existential connection to all living things — and therefore of our responsibility? If we as Bodies of Water were to be socialized in this hydro logic with our environment? Would ideological and material boundaries be overcome and fluidified?“

For more information:
Scholarshop holder Riikka Tauriainen, 2022
www.riikkatauriainen.net