Maija Annikki Savolainen (FI, b. 1980) is a visual artist working with photography, text, stones, and green plants. She received her Master of Arts in Photography from Aalto University in 2014. With a background in biology, her work tends to combine natural sciences and art in a distinctive way. Photographic gestures and light-induced communication technologies are at the core of her practices. Her works have been on exhibition widely in Finland and abroad. She has published a monograph with the title When the Sense of Belonging is Bound to a System of Movement in 2014 by Kehrer Verlag. Alongside her own practice she has been working in various collaborations: One Picture Manifesto, Kinship photo, Trojan Horse Summer School, and Maanantai-collective.
/d a t a c e n t r e presents prehistoric stone circles as ancient data centres: sites for the gathering, processing and distribution of knowledge. It is speculated that crushed quartz, found around stone circles, was once used to connect people to the moon and stars in neolithic times. Today, silicon made of ultra-pure quartz is known for its semiconducting properties, providing the material foundation for our wireless communication infrastructure. Over time and space the function of the mineral remains the same – connecting us through the skies.
The body of work combines photographs with installations of glass, quartz stones, silicon wafers and geopolymers made of municipal waste incineration slag. Through fusing and re-configuring these materials, the exhibition asks: What kind of fossils will digital pictures will leave behind?
Artist is presented by SOFT images
