Tiia Roivanen: “Ele/Gesture” in Vent Space

Tiia Roivanen ELE/GESTURE
15.–21.09.2023 in Vent Space

Tiia Roivanen lives and work in Helsinki, Finland. They graduated from Taidekoulu Maa’s contemporary art study program (2022) and is preparing for a bachelor’s degree in Aalto University’s visual arts education program. In their Bachelor’s artistic research they explore their practicum in how intuition and gestures perform in our sense of selves. They call it ”the practicum of weaving”. They is a self-taught lyricist and composer. In their work, they use singing, lyrics, organic materials and objects that become a part of their work. With their projects, they does solo concerts and music performances. Now they is fascinated to bring their musical work

’Ele’ (Gesture) into an installation and to open a new layer of thoughts with it’s aesthetics. 

Ele/Gesture is proposing movement. Gestures and their interpretations may vary – their connection to humankind is wavering, and sometimes complex. Every gesture adds a layer into our surface. They pierce trough into our previous ways and make space for variation. Sometimes there is dust between the gestures and the surfaces don’t stick to each other. Do you understand the meaning? Yes – no – sometimes you get lost. They always give, reach and receive. You can choose how to answer. 

What kind of gestures you have been practicing? Which gestures lead forward? What kind of gesture you are?

Gesture is a statement for revealing yourself. The idea behind the work is to act as a letter, like a “novella about heartbreak”. Since childhood, I have been fascinated by epochal films from the 1700s and 1800s. I think there’s something about them that never changes – the romantic scenes and the dazzling rays of sun woven into their core, blurring my surroundings. The romanticized scenes from the fields and the way love is being presented as this unbearable source of suffering. The spaces we have created, the spaces we have taken from, the spaces we want to go back to even after we have lost them. This gesture is an act to become seen in grief and movement to see the layers – it strives to be a multimaterial composition. 

I would like to thank my closest people and co-workers for their ultimate support in order to complete Ele. Thank you Elias Riipinen for music producing Ele, Ida Lindgren, Hele Okkonen ja Saija Lehtola for making video cooperation and Helmi Tikkanen who helped me to write this poster in English.

Manifesto:

In my practice I am committed to questioning questions of vulnerability and honesty, which trough play grow first from shyness to trust, and then into an experience of being able to open up, with encounters that reflect the path you are on. I try to surrender myself towards it constantly.