Espai 13

Exhibition program

We will keep each other company when it grows dark

Dates

26/04/2024 — 07/07/2024

Place

Espai 13

Curated by

Irina Mutt

Inari Sandell explores some of the discourses and strategies of the psychiatric disciplinary system that have defined standard accounts of neurodiversity, and especially of autism spectrum disorder. These repressive methods are often aimed at reinforcing the dominant system to ensure that everything works. The control, internment, repression, and medication of disruptive agents are at the basis of this regulatory system. Accordingly, discipline and sanctions are intended to preserve what the capitalist system regards as a person's most valuable attributes: their capacity to produce and consume. In response to these structures and discourses surrounding neurodiversity, Sandell proposes an unexpected signifier to convey an idea of resistance: the butterfly.

Butterfly Logic takes as its starting point the survival strategies used by these insects. Their erratic, zigzagging movements protect them from being caught. Sandell invites us to transpose these patterns of behaviour into the social sphere. The images and objects shown in the exhibition present links and paradoxical relations with various elements and materials used in regulatory treatments of autism. Sandell combines fragility (glass, textiles, and transparency effects) with hardness (sharp edges, spikes, and metal).

The artist's work has received support from Frame Contemporary Art Finland and the Alfred Kordelin Foundation.

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