Artor Jesus Inkerö
Home Is Where My Mouth Is
Helsinki Contemporary
12 January - 11 February 2024
Home Is Where My Mouth Is, 2023
House and furniture paint on paper
66 x 92 cm
Photo: Jussi Tiainen
You stretched me into a ladder, from the
rooftop you could see a star, 2023
House and furniture paint on paper
67,5 x 95,5 cm
Photo: Jussi Tiainen
Architectural Sodomy, 2023
House and furniture paint on paper
145,5 x 104,5 cm
Photo: Jussi Tiainen
Helsinki Contemporary presents a solo exhibition featuring previously unseen works by ARTOR JESUS INKERÖ. In these debuting works, images and actions materialize as words, and text functions as gesture. Using house paints on paper, the artist has inscribed phrases that are deeply personal, political and associative, such as Home is Where My Mouth is, Extreme Form of Hedonism, and Architectural Sodomy. Besides invoking linguistic structures, the handwriting – by virtue of its material – suggests home renovation or remodelling. The exhibition additionally marks the premiere of Inkerö’s new video piece made in collaboration with various artists.
Thematically, Home Is Where My Mouth Is explores the domain between the private and the public. Following up their previous studies of queer identity and social issues, Artor Jesus Inkerö’s recent work examines the nature of queer space and the need for queer architecture. In the displayed works, architecture is linked directly to the body and corporeal experience. The contemporary ethos is reflected in the recurring word ‘home’, which for Artor Jesus Inkerö represents a site of human agency. The works express the artist’s thoughts on the changing nature of families and their status as an institution. “I feel that certain social roles and power structures are being reshaped. For instance what does ‘community’ mean in relation to home and family?"
Artor Jesus Inkerö’s relationship with language and writing is a significant one – it is through writing that they have found connections with other people. “Writing by hand has always been the germinal starting point for all my art, whether ceramics or performance. Written text is always at the core.” Writing is also central to the work of the American painter Cy Twombly, who began combining text and expressionistic brushwork in the 1960s. Echoing Twombly, Artor Jesus Inkerö’s handwriting is a material expression of today’s ethos, alluding to things beyond itself, and blurring the line between the maker and the experiencer. The final interpretation is left up to the reader.
The works in the exhibition convey a powerful message, yet not in an insistent or dogmatic way. The painted texts seem to expand rather than reduce ideas. Humour plays a central role. The artist for instance embraces ‘himbo’ subculture. This aptly named masculine equivalent of the clichéd bimbo is muscular, handsome – and stupid. The term challenges academic discourse and offers an alternative way of processing the world. “I see himbo culture as a fascinating take on an understanding of stupidity that permits things to be experienced through the body instead of theory, or where theory becomes part of corporeal experience without necessarily needing a verbal equivalent.”
Digital elements round out the analogue nostalgia in a natural continuum. Artor Jesus Inkerö’s new video combines artist-shot footage with opera. “My libretto describes a sewer, which I find an amusing word, because I feel like something of a sewer myself. Everything both good and bad goes down the drain, coalescing and transforming into something new.” Artor Jesus Inkerö’s moving images and texts are combined with music composed by Juulia Haverinen and performed by opera singer Sam Taskinen.
ARTOR JESUS INKERÖ (b. 1989) is a Finnish visual artist whose works have been exhibited in New Museum in New York, Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen, SALTS gallery in Basel, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki and NOON Projects in Los Angeles. They have participated in artist residencies, such as the Somerset House in London and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. In their art practice, Artor Jesus Inkerö focuses on topics of queer identity and belonging through exhibitions, performances and public art works and projects. The Finnish Cultural Foundation is supporting the artist’s work.
HELSINKI CONTEMPORARY
Bulevardi 10 - 00120 Helsinki
