Visual artist Hurpia Pedro

Hidden and Missing Things

The main idea of this project at the Saari Residence is the manipulation of an archaic scientific instrument with the purpose of activating relations between the local enviroment, beliefs and the human being who manipulates it. Using artistic strategies of creation, I organize real and fictitious documents, trying to create narrative and visual logics that flirt with the fields of geophysics and divining methods. The archaic instrument will be wooden dowsing rods of varying sizes found in the surrounds of the Residence. ‘Dowsing is an unexplained process in which people use a forked twig to find missing and hidden objects. Dowsing, also known as divining and doodlebugging, is often used to search for water or missing jewelry, but it is also often employed in other applications including ghost hunting, crop circles and fortunetelling.’ Based on this definition, I am interested in the particularity of an 'inexplicable' functioning tool that oscillates between popular belief and science. The idea of a divining tool or a device that can find - with some accuracy - missing and hidden things, can bring me poetic narratives and a rich material to be developed in the period of the Residence. My goal is to create situations of ‘looking-for’ and ‘persistence’ with the use of this object, having popular belief and science as drivers of this action. The personal search for something invisible or lost, whether material or immaterial.