Swim, swam, swum
“The works in the exhibition were created during 2020–2022, and I photographed them in three phases. Wintering covers a period of four months and Swim, swam, swum less than a month. The photos are from December 2022. All the works on display have been photographed in the same place, on my nearby beach in Espoo.
Swim, swam, swum is a short, structurally shaped four-channel poem. In it, the essential elements are the alternation of movement and immobility, the sameness of the place and the repetitiveness of doing, but also the variations in the weather and the seasons and times of the day – storms and calms, mornings and evenings, and the folding of winter into spring. The soundscape supports the rhythmic changes of the worlds below and above surface.
Wintering, on the other hand, is a kind of moving image diary – a structural one too – that is characterized by an organic rhythm both in the images and in their continuum. The soundscape of the work is based on natural sounds, which, after the plush goings-on at the beginning, become thinner and crisper.
In the photographs, I see myself as a small figure on a beach familiar to me, shot from a bird’s eye view. Water is a resting place: far away from the rest of the world – present only me floating on the cold water.
Cold or winter swimming requires and creates presence. The body knows when it is time to come out of the water. If you are curious about the cold, it is easy to be with it. You come to the cold calmly by breathing.”
Visual artist Sanna Sarva lives and works in Espoo. She has participated in several exhibitions at home and abroad (e.g. Baltic Biennale, Gallery Boreay, RU, 2012; The fifth triennial of Finnish photographic art, Salo Art Museum, 2006; Manifesta 3. Gallery of Fine Arts, SL, 2000) and held solo exhibitions in Finland and the Nordic countries (e.g. Hippolyte Studio, Helsinki, 2020; Galleria Paletten, Göteborg, SE, 2002; Galleria Sculptor, Helsinki, 2001). Sarva graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1998 and a Master of Arts from Aalto University in 2013. In addition, in 1992–1993 she studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London.
Contact details of the artist:
https://sannasarva.com