An exhibition of living pictures
A collaboration project between two Estonian artists, Kairi Orgusaar and Erki Kannus, “Sedna” is a 6-part series of images inspired by Arctic mythology, specifically the force known as Sedna. The exhibit combines painting with video projection, resulting in ever-changing, living pictures. A female figure slowly moving in a dark, abstract scenery, evocative of a long winter night, aglow with Aurora Borealis – though the artists have never been in the Far North before, they’ve captured the likeness of what they found it in their mind’s eye.
Sedna, of course, has many names and many guises – some call her Arnaqquassaaq, or Sanna, Arnapkapfaaluk, Sassuma Arnaa, Nerrivik, Nuliajuk, Takánakapsâluk…
Likewise, her story is told differently by various narrators, but some aspects remain constant: that of universal femininity – of the power to give birth. Rebellion, passion, anger and vengeance, oneness with nature, the will to live, dark depths of the ocean – Sedna represents all these things and more.
She was a girl who disobeyed her father. She refused all men and married a monster instead. She gave life to ancestors of nations, and to the creatures of the sea. She perished, drowned, her fingers chopped off by her father, yet survives as a force to be reckoned with. Like Life itself, she endures against all odds, and her strength lies in flexibility.