Gravity Blanket, 2021

By Inari Sandell ^{Emerging artist}

215 x 150 cm

Textile, tempered glass, metal, chain

Part of installation: Gravity Vest, 60×60 cm, 2021

Textile, tempered glass, metal, plastic skeleton hand, marble A unique, hand-sewn piece in the form of a weighted utility vest.

Part of installation: Embroidered textile, recycled glass

Inspired by covid-era emails and our culture of coping, this is a unique hand-sewn and embroidered bag-shaped piece.

“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. 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 was exhibited at Titanik gallery (Turku, Finland) in August 2021 and in Kuvan Kevät graduating masters’ degree show at Exhibition Laboratory (Helsinki, Finland) in May 2021.”