Elsa Salonen

Finnish artist Elsa Salonen examines our relationship to nature in a poetic manner. Salonen's works emerge out of her artistic interpretation of ancient alchemical knowledge. In her art, she activates animist rituals and magic practices once believed to have been lost, asking questions about our relationship to the environment. A profound act of listening to the world is made available to us as "stories told by stones," an enrichment of the millennia-long encounter between humans and stones and a record of the transformation from stones into pigments and from pigments into art. The respectful relationship of the artist to the stones transforms our own encounter into an audience with some of our oldest kin. This is animism at its most life- and world-affirming.