THE OBJECTS: HUMAN NESTS

"I conceptualized and made Human Nests (with the help of a welder Marja Zilcher) when working on a series of performances around the themes of patriotism, belonging, borders and intimacy. As a foreign artist and a student, I have been very lonely here. When the pandemic hit in 2020, I spent the whole spring watching seagulls out my HOAS room window in Merihaka. I paid close attention to the seagulls courting, fucking, nesting, going about their lives and raising their chicks. I felt affinity with those local seagulls, wrote about them, drew them and dreamed about them. Last spring when I started working on “How to like Finland and how Finland can like me (too),” which was both a homage to Joseph Beuys and an attempt to make sense of confusing affects toward new and existing homelands, I thought about seagulls and my affinity with them a lot. While not trying to anthropomorphize them, I imagined how in a fictional world, we, foreign artists can exchange knowledge with seagulls about survival and joy in distant or unwelcoming lands. Then, I decided to create a one day 41st National Park of Finland in Merihaka and facilitate visits for the neighbors at the abandoned playground of Merihaka. I build the first Human Nest that I imagined as a safe and cozy portable home for a foreign artist who learned new things from seagulls. The nest was exhibited at the one day 41st National Part of Finland in Merihaka site in September of this year. A month later I made two more human nests when creating my second performance called Factory of Patriotic Affects and this time fictioning a factory that produced patriotic feelings inside Theater Academy. The performers, who were patriotism researchers, did a final dance wearing these Human Nests, which are also costumes. Human Nests were supposed to help them regain their human feelings. Now, the nests participate at the Merihaka exhibition gesturing toward Merihaka seagulls and their absences and presences."

- Dash Che