Plants and Monsters
Plants and Monsters
2025
Plants and Monsters is a collage and choreographic installation of bodily experiences of heat by artists Lotta Suomi and Heli Keskikallio, where skins, memories, sweat, traces, sproutings, decays, life and death come together.
The name of the piece refers to the celebration of life and, on the other hand, to the destruction and the monstrous side of heat and human action. It brings forth the contradictory experience of heat where enjoyment, vitality, and destructive forces meet.
The collage is an installation-like and choreographed space in which different kinds of mediums and studies on the topic, études, are placed side by side, overlapping each other. The work attempts to liberate, revitalize, and invigorate the poetics of the body at a time when human actions have been condemned many times.
Plants and Monsters invites audiences to experience and ponder on the topic multisensorially, and to make their own connections through the different fragments that compose the piece. It offers intimate, poetic, and sensuous openings to the bodily experience of heat.
During the exhibition the artists hosted performative activations and an open practice activity for audiences on set days. During performative activations, the artists inhabited the exhibition through bodily études. The open practice was a guided workshop during which participants could try out bodily exercises Lotta and Heli developed during the working process.
The exhibition took place in Pertin Valinta, Helsinki 4.-12.12.2025
Supporters: Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, Arts Promotion Center Finland
Co production: Circus Maximus
Residencies: Trois C-L theatre and JoJo Oulu Dance Center co-work residency
2025
Plants and Monsters is a collage and choreographic installation of bodily experiences of heat by artists Lotta Suomi and Heli Keskikallio, where skins, memories, sweat, traces, sproutings, decays, life and death come together.
The name of the piece refers to the celebration of life and, on the other hand, to the destruction and the monstrous side of heat and human action. It brings forth the contradictory experience of heat where enjoyment, vitality, and destructive forces meet.
The collage is an installation-like and choreographed space in which different kinds of mediums and studies on the topic, études, are placed side by side, overlapping each other. The work attempts to liberate, revitalize, and invigorate the poetics of the body at a time when human actions have been condemned many times.
Plants and Monsters invites audiences to experience and ponder on the topic multisensorially, and to make their own connections through the different fragments that compose the piece. It offers intimate, poetic, and sensuous openings to the bodily experience of heat.
During the exhibition the artists hosted performative activations and an open practice activity for audiences on set days. During performative activations, the artists inhabited the exhibition through bodily études. The open practice was a guided workshop during which participants could try out bodily exercises Lotta and Heli developed during the working process.
The exhibition took place in Pertin Valinta, Helsinki 4.-12.12.2025
Supporters: Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, Arts Promotion Center Finland
Co production: Circus Maximus
Residencies: Trois C-L theatre and JoJo Oulu Dance Center co-work residency
