Henna Asikainen
Finnish artist Henna Asikainen creates work that explores the questions surrounding our human relationship with nature, and the complex social and ecological issues that emerge from this. Her recent work has been created with migrant and refugee communities through a process of engagement facilitated within natural landscapes.
As a migrant artist who has lived in Newcastle for 20 years, Henna's projects are grounded in a desire to explore, to engage with, and share the fruits of the great affection that has developed over that time for her new home. This ‘rootedness’ grew into a sense of belonging through discovering and experiencing the history, the culture, the landscape and nature that surrounds and permeates the city.
Not all human experiences of and with nature are equivalent or shared – such as the experience of displacement and migration, or the understanding shared in different communities about the value of the natural environment. In response, her practice tends to be collaborative in nature and often emerges from specific sites and communities that draw on these contexts. Henna produces beautifully poignant work, created through a process of engagement with migrant and refugee communities within our English landscape to explore what constitutes the sense of security and belonging that we call ‘home’ and how this might be built though cultural hospitality.
Henna recently worked with us to produce Forage. Forage attempted to understand what it means to leave and to arrive, to lose and to find, to be uprooted and to make a home. Through a series of curated ‘foraging’ walks through historic landscapes at National Trust properties Seaton Delaval Hall, Cherryburn and Gibside, the project introduced displaced people to the environment beyond the urban spaces they are asked to inhabit, to develop an understanding of the ecological and historical context in which they find themselves. Forage culminated in a temporary installation of foraged natural materials in Nun's Moor Park in the West End of Newcastle as part of Platforma Festival in October 2017.
Her new project Delicate Shuttle refers to a quote by philosopher Bruno Latour, who observes that the world deals with its problems in silos, with each addressed individually, but what is most needed is a delicate shuttle to weave together our interconnected concerns. Our landscapes and people today have been shaped by centuries of immigration and exchange. From our colonising past we bought people, food and customs, alongside samples of seeds and plants that now make up our natural landscapes. These immigrants and guests sit alongside our indigenous European flora, creating a natural landscape as diverse as our population.
Through an exploratory process of foraging walks in the natural landscape with today’s refugees and migrants Delicate Shuttle weaves together a tapestry of fragmented and foraged experience, and will result in an installation of thousands of White Poplar leaves in Newcastle City Library as part of the Great Exhibition of the North from June-September 2018.
As a migrant artist who has lived in Newcastle for 20 years, Henna's projects are grounded in a desire to explore, to engage with, and share the fruits of the great affection that has developed over that time for her new home. This ‘rootedness’ grew into a sense of belonging through discovering and experiencing the history, the culture, the landscape and nature that surrounds and permeates the city.
Not all human experiences of and with nature are equivalent or shared – such as the experience of displacement and migration, or the understanding shared in different communities about the value of the natural environment. In response, her practice tends to be collaborative in nature and often emerges from specific sites and communities that draw on these contexts. Henna produces beautifully poignant work, created through a process of engagement with migrant and refugee communities within our English landscape to explore what constitutes the sense of security and belonging that we call ‘home’ and how this might be built though cultural hospitality.
Henna recently worked with us to produce Forage. Forage attempted to understand what it means to leave and to arrive, to lose and to find, to be uprooted and to make a home. Through a series of curated ‘foraging’ walks through historic landscapes at National Trust properties Seaton Delaval Hall, Cherryburn and Gibside, the project introduced displaced people to the environment beyond the urban spaces they are asked to inhabit, to develop an understanding of the ecological and historical context in which they find themselves. Forage culminated in a temporary installation of foraged natural materials in Nun's Moor Park in the West End of Newcastle as part of Platforma Festival in October 2017.
Her new project Delicate Shuttle refers to a quote by philosopher Bruno Latour, who observes that the world deals with its problems in silos, with each addressed individually, but what is most needed is a delicate shuttle to weave together our interconnected concerns. Our landscapes and people today have been shaped by centuries of immigration and exchange. From our colonising past we bought people, food and customs, alongside samples of seeds and plants that now make up our natural landscapes. These immigrants and guests sit alongside our indigenous European flora, creating a natural landscape as diverse as our population.
Through an exploratory process of foraging walks in the natural landscape with today’s refugees and migrants Delicate Shuttle weaves together a tapestry of fragmented and foraged experience, and will result in an installation of thousands of White Poplar leaves in Newcastle City Library as part of the Great Exhibition of the North from June-September 2018.