Iron that pulsates in our bloodstream is also what powers our consumption, finding its way into everyday items from cutlery to vehicles to weapons. Modern economies’ heavy reliance on resource extraction can be seen as analogous to a vampire’s dependency on blood. The work is inspired by East European vampire folklore tales, and how fear of the monstrous vampire exemplifies humanity’s fear of the other and the unknown. The historical birth of the folkloric vampire reflects how prior to the advent of scientific knowledge, natural phenomena and fear of the other was understood and contained in oral tales and myths. We have always told ourselves stories in order to understand seemingly inconceivable things such as death and degradation. The script in Honkasalo’s video draws from folkloric myths of the vampire, bringing them into a contemporary setting and time. What stories do we tell ourselves in order to justify the environment’s collapse through extractivist practices?
Vampires and resource extraction lead back to the questions that Honkasalo’s research-based practice focuses on: what it means to be human, and what kinds of narratives we construct, belief systems we form, and histories we create in order to understand the world we have created.
Felicia Honkasalo
Felicia Honkasalo (b. 1986) lives and works in Helsinki, Finland and has a Masters from the Department of Time-based Arts, University of the Arts, Helsinki, and a BA in Photography from University of the Arts, London UK. Her work has been shown in Finland and abroad in solo exhibitions, group exhibitions and at international film screenings. Her first monograph, Grey Cobalt, was published by Loose Joints in 2019 (UK). She was part of the collective Honkasalo-Niemi-Virtanen from 2015-2021. Her recent exhibitions include: Shhh Gallery, South Korea (2024); Santa Fe Art Institute, Santa Fe, USA (2024); AIA, Switzerland (2024); Turku Art Museum, Finland (2022) and Helsinki Biennial, Finland (2021). Recent film screenings include BFI London Film Festival (Official Selection) (2021) and Minimalen Festival, Norway, (2023). In addition, she has been in residencies at SeMa Nanji, Seoul Museum of Art, South-Korea (2023); Montello, Nevada, USA (2023) WISC, Santa Fe, USA (2022) as well as ISCP- International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York, USA (2019).
