Maija Tammi
HYDRA
Galleria Huuto Jätkäsaari – Jätkä 2
1st-16th April 2017
The exhibition is open as usual over the Easter holidays.
Hydra is a beginning. The exhibition is a part of a larger, ongoing body of work by Finnish artist Maija Tammi (b.1985).
“Volunteer 4 died – maybe. I mean Robert saw it die on the microscope slide, but the hydra somehow disappeared. It is nowhere to be seen or found, neither with a microscope or a macro lens.” (Extract from Tammi’s laboratory notes.)¬
The exhibition presents the first outcome of the collaboration between Tammi and Robert B. Silver, a professor of biology at Syracuse University. Hydras are small, around 5–15 mm, fresh-water polyps; they’re superstars of regeneration that can regrow into a full animal from just a group of cells, and they do not age. The framework of the exhibition pivots around the failed and successful attempts at keeping the hydras alive and examining their regeneration.
Hydra also presents another view on immortality, or rather on the human escapologist desire of cheating death, through portraits of human-looking android robots. A series of four portraits titled One of them is a human presents three androids and one plausible human.
With Hydra, Tammi embraces tangible possibilities of eternal life and our contemporary attempts to obtain it. The exhibition is a continuation to Tammi’s obsession in the themes of life, death and immortality, which she approached in her previous body of work, White Rabbit Fever.
The exhibition is curated by Niccolò Fano, director of Matèria Gallery in Rome.
Hydra is supported by Finnish Cultural Foundation.
More information:
Niccolò Fano
contact(a)materiagallery.com
+39 333 524 7410
Maija Tammi
maija(a)maijatammi.com
+358 40 542 4655
