HANNA KANTO

Hanna Kanto, 31.5-12.10.2025

Havremagasinet, Boden, Sweden

 

Hanna Kanto’s work is a collection of gestures regarding entanglements with “nature” explored in different materials and media, varying from latex and/or resin casting to oil painting and berry juice cooking. All elements that with great humor and insight are emphasized through the contrasting aspects Kanto brings forth, assembling and rendering visible the complexities involved in her native northern Finland ́s – not to say “our” – relationship with nature, ranging from worshiping its beauty, being grateful for the moments of peace and tranquility that it provides, as well as exploiting it as a way of sustaining our life style and the society of consumption we have constructed. Kanto’s works unfold all the contradictions and entanglements of this relationship: the spiritual, the mundane and vernacular, the industrial and/or exploitative, and all in-betweens.

 

The works on display here centers on her engagement with the different jobs and activities connected to the enjoyment of and use of variety of the resources the forest offers - foraging berries, mushrooms or timber, highlighting the role and the impact of the human presence has in nature, but also interfoliating this with the – ironic – encounter between the natural and the industrial, such as the extraction of timber performed by the logger and the “natural” extraction of the trees carried out by the bark beetles.

 

Kanto’s works act like a magnifying glass that presents us with all the materials that make up these interactions - pine needles, pinecones, tree bark, spruce bark beetles, plywood, plywood serving as skin, dried meat, chainsaws and loggers or foragers themselves as wood sculptures or painted figures. Kanto’s installation even engagement the exhibition gallery itself by making use of Havremagasinet wooden columns in creating an industrial forest, an immersive experience edged between capital and the spiritual.

 

 

Mariangela Mendez Prencke