(Un)ravelling

”(Un)ravelling” is a sculpture installation where hand-bent scrap metals form an architectural structure breaking free and wandering through the space. Found and collected metals have been bent using a traditional technique employed by blacksmiths, where the hollow metals are filled with sand and heated in a forge. The metals bear traces of their previous conditions, uses, and who crafted the metal. In the installation, interconnected metal parts weave into themes of unraveling and reweaving, the circulation, movement of materials, and its potential to reorganize and reshape. ”When creating the works, I thought of: Home that is not permanent but constantly in motion and change. That concreteness is never a rigid entity stuck in time, but something that gives in to circumstances, creating diverse and changing relationships around it. Materials contains signs of their pasts, which are themselves fragmented, partly imagined, and mouldable. Temporality, permanence, layers, and the ability of craft traditions to weave worlds out of these. Care and nurture as a way of encountering with the surrounding material world. And the community that we as humans form with these seemingly immovable objects.” Petra Vehviläinen is a sculptor working with sculpture and installation. Her works are characterized by practices in which abandoned and found objects form spatial weaves and networks, intertwining with contents arising from posthumanist and new materialist thinking: Materia, materials, and space are considered as co-actors and co-creators in the making processes of the works. Vehviläinen has created installations, sculptures, sound works, and performances in urban spaces, various natural locations, and galleries.