VIRIDITAS
drawing installation: grahite drawings on paper, ultramarine blue wall paint, magnets.
Tegnerforbundet, Oslo 2023
Viriditas - group exhibition at Tegnerforbundet, 2022
Text for the exhibition
There was the soft sound of ringing bells. The tissue was from an animal or a human, a
soft material with a strange smell on it.
Kallio’s work originates from a drawing installation that she lost while traveling from Bergen to Bogotá in the autumn of 2017, somewhere at Oslo airport. The lost drawings were part of an installation titled Materialization, which explored photographs of ectoplasm and the work of the Irish spiritualist, medium, and performer Helen Duncan. During her career, Duncan traveled widely and produced staged photographs of her séances, in which spirits appeared to materialize from her mouth, ears, and nose. She later became the last person to be prosecuted under the Witchcraft Act of 1735 in London.
The work revolves around questions related to Duncan’s practice—its performative nature, the interplay of belief and deception, and the shifting power dynamics between the medium, her audience, and the unseen. It also touches on ideas of witchcraft, embodiment, and the fragility.
Taru Kallio