Artworks from installation Gravity Blanket: Hand dyed silk in green and pink, 2021

By Inari Sandell ^{Emerging artist}

82 x 60 cm

Scanography, pigment print on aluminium

Edition 5 + AP

“Gravity Blanket is a mixed media body of work consisting of photographic and sculptural pieces. It considers neurological queerness, embodied knowledge, touch, resilience and our culture of coping. The work draws from my personal neurodivergent experience; like many others on the autism spectrum, I sense my surroundings intensely and with overwhelming focus on details. With Gravity Blanket, I bring this experience into the center of my artistic work as a subject matter as well as a method. I let my sensitivities inform the material choices in my work and search for an embodied ‘autistic knowledge’ that guides me in my process. My aim is to disrupt neuronormative concepts of wellness and illness, agency and interpersonal and visual communication. The series of photographs are made with a scanner and depict the event of touching different textiles. I worked on a scanner because of the shallowness of its depth of field – when everything is equally in focus, everything is of equal importance, but it also creates an abstraction. This relates to my experience with neurodivergent perception. While the photographic pieces explore the possibility of a neuroqueer gaze – one that can wander freely from detail to detail, allowing for unfixed production of meanings –, the installation and sculpture pieces have a more formal and material connection to the everyday realities of neurodivergent life. The name piece, Gravity Blanket (2021), takes the form of a weighted blanket, a common wellness product which was originally developed as an aid for neuropsychiatric care. Light and see-through but filled with carefully sewn-in shattered glass, the blanket depicts complex realities of neurodivergent coping.” The work has been exhibited as a part of an MFA graduation show, Kuvan Kevät, in May 2021 and in solo exhibition, Gravity Blanket, at Titanik gallery in August 2021.

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