Terike Haapoja’s Commission at the Biennale

Terike Haapoja will transform the Nordic Pavilion into a research laboratory, where technology and science find their place as tools for investigating the basic questions of life and art – memory, our relationship with nature, and mortality. 

In her central work Community, we see animals that have just passed away—a horse, a cat, a calf, a dog, and a bird— each one recorded on infrared video. The images show the inexorable loss of temperature gradient across the body surface: colorful life fades away in front of our eyes and vanishes into the deep blue background; islands of living matter drown into the entropic sea. 

What kind of community is this? Are we part of it? How does it demarcate its territory?

Copyright © Terike Haapoja.