Our featured artist this week is Minna Kokko, who is also exhibiting in our virtual exhibition 'Science and Art' 15/01/2021-14/02/2021.We chose Kokko because her photographic investigations of nature makes her audience reconsider how it is all entwined- from roots to the moon. Her works layers notions of time and space in a collaged way through varying degrees of transparencies of photographs. Having the starting point of photography, Kokko prints her artworks on a variety of canvas' such as paper, wood and aluminium.
What has captured me the most in Kokko's photography is the beauty in the fragility of the forms and their exploration of the connectivity of the world in nature. The circular centre in reference to the lunar cycle cast by a microscope suggests that nature on Earth is influenced by forces beyond where we live, such as the moon.
Selected artwork:
Living (2020)
"The series “Living” was born in April 2020 during the Covid-19 lockdown in France. I
felt a need to examine the smallest possible living organisms and search for beauty
in them.
In this series I use an image of plant cells under microscope as a “magnifying glass”
that I place on different vegetal and mineral elements of nature. I am looking for the
common nature of all living things: plants, trees, roots and even stones.
The sphere of the microscope creates a moon-like effect. Curiously, after having
finished the series, I learned that trees’ life cycle is connected to the moon: the way
their leaves and sap develop is determined by the cycle of the moon.
I intend this series as a tribute to the Earth, and sincerely hope it will contribute to a
common will to preserve it and cherish its visible and invisible beauty"