Children of Compost, artistic research and production

Hakemuksen tiivistelmä

My great grandmother Martta Pellavavirta was a “torppari” farmer. With her husband they turned a small forest into a field, in the course of 5 years, with only the force of their bodies and the help of a horse. There in Jämsä, Keski-Suomi, they built their home, and everything inside, with the wood of the surrounding pine trees. They grew rye and produced terva, but Martta also grew and weaved the most beautiful linen, rough and full of raw chunks of linen straws. I want to tell Martta’s stories, the weave of her textile language, but also the stories of other women in my family and their craft: Paula, Francoise, Yvette… I want to portray them through the materiality that they created, and that created them. Portraits in the shape of sculptures and images, with materials compiled from their homes, diaries, photos, drawings, objects, crafts. The ensemble will consist of a series of sculptures, and a publication, in addition to producing a body of research. Children of Compost is an exploration of the shared kind and material world as humus, where all the bodies and objects are considered as agents of the fecund humus at different states of growth and decomposition. An attempt to shaping the future with an eco-feminist perspective on past lives.