10.2.-5.3.2023

It got dark and the very colorless buds were ready to pop open. I waited and looked at them, at times deliberately looking away and then, just as quickly, looking back as if to surprise them. Busted, I thought, but for nothing.

Then I forgot to look. (I was thinking about Leila.)

Suddenly a vanilla-like, sweet and intoxicating smell fills my nostrils. The buds had opened and revealed ragged and shiny white flowers, reaching in different directions like the legs of a spider. In the morning the flowers were gone. They withered away as they were tired of waiting for a nocturnal pollinator, like a bat or a moth. I have not encountered them indoors yet.

***

I think about the transience of an experience, how it is suddenly something else. I think about the way in which a memory breaks into pieces. And lying memories. I also think about untold stories, the ones that would stifle the magic if they were told. And the way in which the lifeless looked alive and the living looked lifeless.

I show places, experiences, memories and items that exist or have existed. The outcome itself, however, is non-existent and deceptive with blurred boundaries and stories blending into each other.

Juliana Hyrri (b. 1989) is a Helsinki-based visual artist who mainly works with painting and modern comics. She has a Master of Arts degree from Aalto University and is currenting working on her Master of Fine Arts studies at the Academy of Fine Arts.