Electric Priestess
 

By: Rosa-Maria Nuutinen

18th – 21st August 2023

FabCafe Fuji, 3 Chome-5-16 Shimoyoshida, Fujiyoshida, Yamanashi 403-0004

 

Within her practice, Rosa-Maria Nuutinen explores the juxtaposition of the physical and the digital, questioning our collective relationship towards technology by asking how new inventions mould our society, influencing our personal experiences of place. Nuutinen has a primarily drawing based practice, but she also works in photography, film and writing.

 

Electric Priestess is the culmination of Nuutinen living and working at Saruya Artist Residency in Fujiyoshida, Japan, for a period of two months. The exhibition explores our relationship towards electricity and imagines a dystopian future where our need for constant convenience and escapism from physical reality has caused us to worship electricity, becoming almost addicted to this relatively new creation.

 

During her time in Fujiyoshida Nuutinen has been thinking about our relationship towards electricity, how the cables are sewn into our cities, spiralling around us like worms. How our neighbourhoods are scattered with shintai like poles, where cords and lines unite, giving home to this invisible power that enables us to get a cold drink in the middle of the night from a machine that looks like a micro version of Las Vegas.

 

The exhibition at FabCafe Fuji features a series of drawings, paintings and prints, as well as a floor-based sculpture. The drawings and paintings depict various figures interacting with futuristic virtual reality equipment and technology inspired by pieces of tech seen around the city.

 

The sculpture, made up of a found polystyrene box, wires and electric cords, is a physical manifestation of technology taking over a manufactured object. The work is a reinterpretation of how, throughout Fujiyoshida, plants can be seen growing out of discarded polystyrene boxes, slowly reclaiming their planet. In the same vein, the prints depict a series of images of 3D scanned digital models of akiyas and forgotten items found around Fujiyoshida.

 

Electric Priestess explores our collective relationship to technology, heavily inspired by the time Nuutinen has spent in Fujiyoshida, and Japan as a whole.

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Nuutinen’s time at Saruya has been generously supported by Finnish Cultural Foundation.