tokonoma series 2. SLOW BLUE LOVE
Vincent Roumagnac & Nina Liebenberg
16.-19.3
Thursday, Friday, Saturday: 14:00-19:00
Sunday: 13:00-16:00
30' booking slot (one person at a time) / Free
Booking here: https://vello.fi/pengerkatu7tyohuone/
tokonoma series
The tokonoma is a small alcove within a traditional Japanese home which serves as a little stage for showcasing a mise-en-scène consisting of specific works of art, including calligraphy (kakejiku) and floral arrangements (ikebana), often complemented by precious objects of craftsmanship. The tokonoma functions as an indoor container, harmonizing these artifacts to reflect the actual season. The tokonoma is not merely a receptacle but an artwork per se, embodying the multiple interactions at play among architecture, interior, exterior, and the triptych-arrangement poem/flowers/object.
Since 2020, Vincent Roumagnac, meanwhile facilitating ikebana workshops in Työhuone, have been growing the idea of implementing artistic collaborations centered around the notion/practice of tokonoma, the vision finding resonance in the specific layout of Työhuone's window-bench space.
Eventually, in spring 2024, Vincent launches the new series 'Tokonoma', inviting French artist Jérôme Allavena in March and Helsinki-based South-African curator Nina Liebenberg in May to co-create the two first tokonoma constellations, reinterpreting the traditional elements of the Japanese tokonoma through their respective practices, responding to the season as topic, environment, and medium of the encounter.
tokonoma series 2. SLOW BLUE LOVE
What Vincent and Nina have in common is that they both hail from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, Vincent from the French Basque country and Nina from South Africa. Two lands bathed in sunshine, battered by storms and wounded by history. In the mid-90s, Vincent trained as an actor at a national drama school in France. Nina, on the other hand, starts studying Fine Art in a small university town. When they meet in Helsinki in 2023, they are both involved in artistic research projects linked to botanical gardens. Art, oceans and gardens, therefore. When did they first talk about Prospect Cottage? For the second tokonoma in the series, Vincent invites Nina and her blue moon to rise above an arrangement of seaweed and poppies (if the latter can be found in Helsinki, otherwise it might be peonies). In return, Nina proposes to accompany the painting with a piece of curatorial writing, a weaving of multiple and fractal references, transposing the singularity of an exhibition label into a resonant contextual plurality. Together, with this tokonoma of May, they pay homage to Derek Jarman and all artist-gardeners, juxtaposing flowers, seaweed, found objects, artifacts, stories of bridges and other stuff.
Nina Liebenberg
Nina Liebenberg is a South African artist-curator, currently conducting her post-doctoral research at the University of the Arts, Helsinki. Before moving to Finland, Nina spent the last 10 years working at the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Curating the Archive, convening a selection of courses for its curatorial programme. Using curation as method, she explores overlaps and connections between various university departments, and regularly draws on the expertise of individuals from chemistry, medical imaging, physics, engineering, and botany, to create artworks and curate shows portraying the intersection between the quantifiable and the poetic. Her doctoral research (completed in 2021) took the form of an object study that exposed the limitations of insider knowledge and systems of categorization within the academic departments of the University of Cape Town, and demonstrated the explanatory, interdisciplinary potential of curatorship and artmaking. Her current project, Planthology, explores human-plant relationships, using curatorship to convene diverse perspectives on the theme.
Https://www.instagram.com/nina.liebenberg/
https://www.uniarts.fi/en/projects/planthology/
Vincent Roumagnac
Vincent Roumagnac is a Helsinki-based Basque-French artist and researcher. Vincent started his career in theater as a director but gradually moved away from straight theater context. Instead, he has been focusing on how the concepts of stage and theatricality transform in the context of climate change, technology, and discipline fluidity, at the crossing of visual, installation, and performing arts, exploring new artistic ways to engage with contemporary, multiple and complex, environments. Since 2010 they team with Finnish choreographer Simo Kellokumpu and since 2012 with French visual artist Aurélie Pétrel, with whom they are, in 2020, winner of the Villa Kujoyama Residency prize. In 2020, Vincent completed his Doctorate in Arts at TUTKE-Performing Arts Research Centre/Uniarts Helsinki, with his artistic research project ‘Reacclimating the Stage’. He then has been conducting, as a visiting artist-researcher at the same institution, the post-doctoral artistic research project DATA OCEAN THEATRE, whose two artistic parts were publicly shown at the Titanik gallery (Turku) in 2022, and at Kiasma in 2023 on the occasion of the Moving November international festival. In parallel to his commitment in art and research activities, Vincent have been practicing floral design, based on the techniques learned in their youth in a family of florists and gardeners, and on the practice of ikebana he has developed during several stays in Japan. Since 2020, Vincent has been co-hosting with Simo Kellokumpu Pengerkatu 7 Työhuone (Massage & Beauty) in Helsinki.
Accessibility:
Työhuone is located on the street level, but there is one step in the entrance. The door is 70 cm wide.
Event Venue
Pengerkatu 7, FI-00530 Helsinki, Suomi, Pengerkatu 7, FI-00530 Helsinki, Suomi,Helsinki, Finland