A Body Called Paula Exhibition and Performance

Sirkku Ketola, A Body Called Paula (work in progress), 2016, performance and screenprint on paper, installation and print dimension variable. Photo by Sirkku Ketola.


Main Gallery
A Body Called Paula Exhibition and Performance
Sirkku Ketola
February 16, 2017 – March 18, 2017

Closing Reception and Performance: Saturday, March 18, 2:00 – 4:00 PM

A Body Called Paula has been risen. The work has been done. Thank you for your information Toronto. Hold the whispers of the knowledge. Carry them with the dignity. A Body is true. Who are you? It is time for the celebration of the beauty. 


There are no theories, just movement.

Flying bee creates growth and honey. Energy circulates. Abandoned house was once new. At the courtyard some apple trees are still in bloom. Suddenly blue ortolan takes flight.

Wandering around the marks of civilization with the knowledge of the existential passion. Observing how life passes the concrete and control. Challenging the body to serve between satisfaction and pain. That is my chase for the bubble, the goal of labour when delivering art. I have noticed that long touch opens the thoughts. Hands handle the fragility and the strength of material. Time continues and ends. Something moves. Be patience or run?

Antonin Artaud talked about flesh. If it is not touched, the art is fallen. His conceptual point was clear. As a person who was raised by wrestlers and a strict classical music school I understand what he said. Something can pass the body and tremble the mind, no less with beauty as Hilma af Klint did. What comes after is interesting. Will the happening reach the rational deliberation and vice versa? Even, are the both sides necessary?

In the project A Body Called Paula the performance surrounding a long lasting, manual work of screenprinting unites hands and technology. Physicality feeds thinking and the mind understands the material. This sensual machine produces overwhelming handmade ornament ribbons as the side products of thinking. They are meant to lure to wa(wo)nder.

Sirkku Ketola (b. 1973 in Turku, Finland) works and lives in Finland and stays regularly in Belgium. Her mind is fed by the northern silence and the urban streets of Europe. Her exhibitions have passed through international borders in a variety of galleries and museums. Renowned as a screenprinter, she is often solicited to teach and lecture in art academies. She speaks although the quiet allures her. She describes herself a civilized savage.

The exhibition is accompanied by a text Daryl Vocat. Click the button below to download.