Niran Baibulat

My work at the Saari Residence began with getting to know the area, which in practice meant walking and cycling tours of the surrounding countryside every day. I’ve become familiar with the wooded areas skirting the fields, with their old oak trees. During my walks I’ve started to link the oaks in certain areas together with woollen thread. I then collect the wool and crochet it into a route map I’m making of the area. This is one of the ways in which I’m developing methods of measurement during my stay at Saari, methods that are based on subjective experience of one’s environment.

At Saari I’m also continuing work on a series of small-scale environmental pieces, which are made by braiding different grasses and other organic materials into a single surface. These works are fleeting marks on the landscape, pauses one might call them. The processual nature of my work, the time when my sense of the environment in which I’m in gradually develops, has become increasingly important to me. As I travel through the landscape I occasionally pause, and leave behind a braided surface. In my work as a whole, as in each braided piece itself, it is patient repetition that creates the full picture.