Johanna Ruotsalainen is composer, visual artist and senior lecturer in music in Oulu UAS. Ruotsalainen has participated in many internationally established festivals as invited artist in recent years and has collaborated with some of the most acclaimed contemporary performers. Simi Susanna Ruotsalainen is media-artist, independent filmmaker and photographer from Rovaniemi, Finland. Their main medium is video art, especially combining photography with drawn animation. Ruotsalainen’s art is often related to Northern and Arctic areas, environmental issues and feminism.
I Am a Living Being is a video installation by artists Johanna Ruotsalainen and Simi Susanna Ruotsalainen. The artwork consists of animated human-like facial features illustrating the imagined portrait of ”the earth” projected on the bed of soil, gravel and dirt. The earth is talking about their rights and rights of other beings related to them. The speech is modified from Universal Declaration of Rights of Mother Earth. By giving a human-like face to the earth, the artists want to emphasize nature’s worth and demonstrate that the earth has similar rights to exist and not to be exploited, as humans and animals. Is it easier to accept these rights, if they look like us and speak our language?
I Am a Living Being at Art Ii Biennial 2020
Exhibition space open 11 June – 14 June 2020 Thu-Fri 11AM-5PM Sat-Sun 11AM-3PM 16 June – 4 July 2020 Tue-Fri 12-4PM and Sat 11AM-3PM Closed on Sundays and Mondays and on Midsummer 19 June – 20 June. Address: Kauppilantie 15, 91100 Ii Free admission!
