ELINA KATARA AND GENTLY ARCHIVING GAZE

 

Saara Hacklin, Doctoral candidate in aesthetics

Palpating with our look (”palper du regard”) is an expression used by Frenchman Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It describes an attitude where the look does not try to maintain a safe distance and capture the object. Feeling with the look is characterized by nearness, but also by uncertainty and acceptance of openness in relation to the object of the look. In exactly the same manner as hands in darkness, also the look must advance groping.

In Elina Katara’s (born 1975) works the look seems to grope and linger on the surface of the objects, for example in Ajelehtijat (The Drifters, 2005), a series of works, where the motive of the small drawings in ink consists of everyday constellations. On the one hand Katara’s works hark back to the tradition of still-life. Drawings offer familiar elements: a snuffed candle or reflections on glass. Froth on beer transforms into milk in a baby-bottle, and somewhere next to a knife one can discern a remote control.

Ajelehtijat is also reminiscent of a memory game. As if the artist were trying to reach out for fleeting everyday moments, or wanted to bring order to chaos. Drifters do not seem to have permanent home, objects appear to be continuously on their way somewhere just to end up somewhere else the next moment. They form momentary groups and compositions in homes.

In Rakastetun muotokuva (Portrait of beloved, 2007) Katara describes a doll whose hair stands on end, whose twisted limbs reach out in different directions, and whose clothes are ragged. Time has left its mark with innumerable touches and caresses. After such marks of affection the doll may even appear repulsive rather than attractive. Even though Katara often draws unimportant or discarded things, they still retain a strong sense of presence: as if the objects were still warm with touch. Katara’s skillful hand fondles them and thus awakes memories of scores and cuts on a slicing board, the unkempt hair of a doll or the rustling of a paper bag for bread.

Themes of presence and time are evident also in the series Mukulat (The Family, 2008). In resemblance to family portraits the artist has drawn faces on potatoes and then taken photographs of them. Family photos as well as different inherited objects mark the inevitable cycle of generations and the passing of time when memories and those who remember fade away.

Arkisto (Archive, 2007)is a display in an archive of all those small things that could be found in Katara’s home. Different objects are meticulously recorded on pieces of paper and then saved in maps in the archive. When one’s look has thoroughly examined and recorded the saved object, can it be discarded? If an archive then is a catalogue and a storage place to help remember and safekeep – one can check in the archive to see what heap of things one has cherished in the cupboards – what use does an object then have anymore?