Această lucrare de absolvire a Royal College of Art din Londra îi aparţine absolventei suedeze Hilda Hellström şi se intituează Materialitatea unui dezastru natural. Este vorba despre o serie de vase pentru depozitarea alimentelor făcute din pământ radioactiv din zona dezastrului nuclear de la centrala atomică Fukushima Daiichi la 11 martie 2011, ca urmare a cutremurului şi a tsunamiului care au lovit Japonia în acea zi.
În acest scop Hilda Hellström a contactat ultima persoană încă în viaţă din zona de evacuare, pe Naoto Matsumura, şi a luat mostre de pământ din câmpul său de orez, care azi nu mai poate fi lucrat din cauza contaminării radioactive. Realizate ca o reflecţie la analogiile dintre obiectele mitice şi obiectele tranziţionale winnicottiene, artista speră că vasele create vor dobândi o valoare simbolică, ajutând oamenii să înţeleagă enormitatea dezastrului.
Iată care este interesantul concept al lucrării:
The foundation of this work is research about the psychology of the public mind and ideas from postmodern philosophy regarding the nature of ‘reality’ in today’s society.
The project starts with the notion of ‘the myth’. Hellström has investigated the idea that the mythical object is a tool that helps us understand or relate to our reality. A small piece of the Berlin wall can be used to symbolise and help process a big part of history – and as such it becomes an object loaded with a lot of meaning and emotion.
Hellström found similarities between the mythical object and what Winnicott named the Transitional Object, i.e. how the teddy bear is used by a child to be able to meet, understand and make sense of the surrounding world.
The aim with the project is to, in a similar way, construct an object that speaks of a much larger event than the object itself and inhabits a narrative that goes far beyond its form or function.
Hellström’s thesis is that there are places and people that inhabit more narrative than others, or have a story that everyone can relate to. What if you are able to extract material from this person or this place, and create objects of this material? Could these objects serve as, or become mythical objects?
Through research, she learnt about Naoto Matsumura, the last man still living in the evacuated zone by the Daiji power plants in Fukushima, Japan. With help from The Foreign Correspondence Club Japan, Hellström got in contact with Matsumura who showed great interest to collaborate. For four days Hellström documented Matsumura’s day-to-day life inside the evacuated zone.
In an attempt to make use of the wasteland, which due to radiation has become useless, they collected soil from his rice fields to create symbols, reflecting the situation inside the zone. From this soil, Hellström made a series of slightly radioactive food vessels, which are just as useless for their purpose as the land and the farmers of Fukushima.
Hilda Hellström is a Swedish designer, who with this project graduates from a Masters in Design Products at Royal College of Art (RCA). She started her education with a solid foundation in fine art, with studies in Barcelona and Copenhagen. Before moving to London to commence her studies at the RCA, she did a BA in product design at Beckmans College of Design in Stockholm.
The combination of art and design has led to an independent way of working with a focus on the process and thoughts behind the result. Hellström explores the notion of myth and narrative that inhabit objects and is preoccupied with things that shock us and situations that elevate the soul. She describes herself as an analytic craftswoman, having been influenced from a young age by both her phychoanalyst mother and carpenting father.
To share the context around her craft based objects, she also works with film, explaining it as a medium that enables you to captivate the audience in another world for a while. With these manifestations she makes fiction, truth and different realities join together.
Surse: http://www.hildahellstrom.se/, http://www.dezeen.com/2012/06/20/the-materiality-of-a-natural-disaster-by-hilda-hellstrom/#more-219983
