During the Rural Contextual Practice series (RCP) at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Research Station, I began a drawing-based project focused on non-anthropocentric perspectives and plant life in the Malla Strict Nature Reserve. Avoiding photography, I drew one plant per day, using this slow process to reconsider what it means to pay attention to nature. Along the way, a chance encounter with a tourist questioning reindeer behaviour, and a later meeting with artist Leena Valkeapaa, shifted my thinking, revealing contradictions in legislation and diverse views on reindeer grazing’s ecological role.
Inspired by this, I invited fellow artists to draw plants and write imagined reflections from the plant’s perspective, which were then mailed out to them anonymously from Kilpisjärvi irrespective of who drew what. The project evolved into What Plants Are Saying (About Us): a participatory, site-responsive gesture that moves away from fixed outcomes toward a process of thinking in tandem with the place and its inhabitants.
Left: Drawing by Jamie Gilroy Barret, right: Drawing by Anna Pezzoli, 2024.
Imagined Site – Rural contextual practice: a KUNO workshop focused on site-responsive making in rural contexts, led by facilitators Daniel Peltz, Dr. Vytautas Michelkevičius, and Sissi Westerberg – artists and educators who open the field to new ways of thinking and creating. The host organisation is Kilpisjärvi Biological Research Station in co-operation with the Bioart Society Residency.
© 2022
