Two years ago a collaboration has started between Vrijhof Culture and ARE, Artist in Residencies Enschede. Once a year artists from the exchange project ARE will show their work in the large exhibition room of Vrijhof Culture, University of Twente.
This year we present the work of Eeva-Liisa Puhakka, an artist from Finnland.
Eeva-Liisa Puhakka works in mediums that include kinetic sculpture, video, installation and environmental art. Puhakka is a member of Scent Club Berlin, a collective of artists, designers and scientists working in and between scents and smells and these fields of practice. The group focuses on scent and olfaction as an expressive medium for experimentation in art, science and technology. A specific focus in her recent work has been the investigation of human and animal dependence: the synanthropic species, together with global environmental changes on bird populations and bird migration in correlation to human migration.
The nature of her art is usually site-specific. She puts the viewer in the middle of the installation, so to create the work through direct experience and the experience transmits through images, sound, objects, moving or inactive objects and even smells. By applying a poetic language she absorb the storytelling art in her art practice.
Many of themes in her works approaches memory and time. Themes encountered include objective/subjective history, rural flight, personal and family history, nature and animal. She addresses memory and time from diverse angles using the sense of smell and imprints of history in architecture and landscape.
