An Enthusiastic Yes is Pilvi Takala’s first solo show in Italy. It focuses on the artist’s most recent projects, from the past two years. The exhibition consists of two large video installations: Admirer (2018) and The Stroker (2017) specifically reconfigured for Careof. Both works deal with themes of care, relationships, affection, and addiction, but also self-preservation and representation, in their various meanings and ways of being experienced, whether it be in private or professional contexts.

Admirer is a nine-channel video installation based on e-mail negotiations between Takala and an anonymous “admirer”. In the online chats, the Admirer has a gendered misogynistic and harassing behavior, with minimal risks of retaliation. The work presents the way Takala and Anonymous negotiate the terms of a contract, an attempt by the artist to find a way to terminate all contact. The two-channel installation The Stroker is based on a real event experienced by the artist during a visit to a co-working space in London. There, she offered to pose as a wellness consultant with the name of Nina Nieminen and provided “touching” services to cheer up the workers. The responses to the "touches" varied widely, most people reacted politely, but some people’s body language registered clear discomfort: perhaps because of the cultural context, of the personal space invasion, or because of the interior conflict that arises when one doesn’t feel able to openly or truthfully react. 

When unable to assert oneself, this kind of embodied negotiation may take the place of words. The nuances of movement demonstrate how people negotiate the dilemma of being mediated bodies under social pressure, and how such responses are controlled by the tacit conventions governing what is deemed to be ‘acceptable behavior’. In the clear-walled, open-thinking space of The Stroker, we witness a physical negotiation of boundaries where there seemingly are none.

Pilvi Takala (1981, Helsinki) works and lives between Helsinki and Berlin. She received her MA at Fine Arts Academy in Helsinki in 2006. In 2013, she was awarded with the Finnish State Prize for Visual Arts and the Frieze London’s Emdash Award. “Second Shift” is the artist’s first solo show, which opened at KIASMA Museum in August 2018.

pilvitakala.com

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