ELINA BÄCKMAN

Writing having become a central methodological element of Elina Bäckman’s contemporary artistic practice, she will be concentrating on further developing work that focuses on re-discussing the phenomenon of ‘defining’. The essayistic work wants to discuss and examine the methodologies of textual ‘defining’, and especially that of how to define ‘space’ – whether particular or universal – emphasizing the counter-influence of the corporeal sphere and bodily perception affecting the articulation of this phenomenon of ‘defining’. As an intertextual work, it observes and investigates the methodological appearing of how to ’define’, ‘organize’ and ‘relate’, particularly through the works of Georges Perec, Marguerite Duras, Vilém Flusser and Roland Barthes. Simultaneously, in its attempt to localize artistic activity as a practical process of redefinition in itself, it tries to de-code and re-analyze some text-based work of artists, such as Trinh T. Minh-ha, Erwin Wurm, and the artist collective Fischli & Weiss.

BIOGRAPHY

Elina Bäckman (b. 1982) lives and works in Helsinki. She received her M.A. degree at Aalto University School of Art, Design and Architecture in 2015 and graduated from the School of Art and Media, Tampere University of Applied Sciences (B.A.) in 2008. In 2005-2006, she studied at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Germany, concentrating especially on experimental film and on holography. Her work has been shown at solo exhibitions in Finland, at Galleri Sinne (Diorama, 2010), at Cable Gallery (Now, Reanimated, 2010) and on Studio Stage of Media Centre Lume in the Aalto University (Body, I – Translocated, 2013). She has participated in group exhibitions and presented her work at film festivals in the Nordic countries as well as in Central and Eastern Europe. As mediums for her artistic practice, Bäckman uses light, photography, sculpture and installation, as determined by the context and the articulated phenomena. Her earlier installations – being minimalistic and reduced in their aesthetics – often require the viewer’s movement in order for them to ‘appear’, aiming at activating the viewer to corporeally interact and influence the appearing of the image itself. Her work often deals with sense perception and the formation of the conceptual, examining the relation of cognitive functions to how we perceive and understand the outer phenomena.