z2o Sara Zanin is pleased to present Unfolding hope, the fourth solo exhibition by Kaarina Kaikkonen (Iisalmi, 1952), this time invited to engage with the gallery’s space at Via Alessandro Volta 34.

Kaarina Kaikkonen's work invariably features a sentimental exploration of small objects carrying personal and social symbolic values, but her ability to constantly reinvent new formal configurations in both individual works and installations remains surprising.

In this exhibition with its highly evocative title, the time has come for “sprouting”, which emerges timidly but clearly in her recent works.

Clothing and furnishings so dear to her and emblematic of our history and daily experience now lead us in new directions and to new destinations. They arise from an urgency dictated by modern times in which there is no longer room to look back wistfully and we must move forward with determination to future renewal instead.

In some works, shirts are incubators of life in which gold becomes petals (Unfolding hope), vibrant wings (Not too late), or a cup that collects its essence (I will fill my cup).

Gold softens the opacity of old fabrics, symbolically linked as it is to elevation, conscious knowledge, and moral evolution. A cup appears in another work (Alright, I'll strive to grow) in which lifeblood is metaphorically distilled and collected: a clear impulse towards change.

In other works, the phenomenon of vegetation takes form in a leaf made of fabric placed delicately on the wall (I grow with the light of spring), in a flower created by reworking a dancing shoe (The queen of the night) that adds brio to the wearer’s step, and even branches sprouting from jackets that evoke the miracle of rebirth (There is light inside me).

This is how it goes for nature, no less for humanity, another part of this ecosystem.
But where does the artist nest?

The artist is here, in fact, a butterfly/chrysalis attempting to emerge from the cocoon hung from ceiling at the center of the exhibition space. (Soon I Will Depart, Maybe).

In Kaarina Kaikkonen's works, the capacity for transformation is not only generational in nature but also “symbolically spiritual”, as may be seen in the overlapping collars that end in a point of intense rosy light resembling an aura (Layers of life).

The artist certainly does not deny the importance of the emotional and social memory she carries with her always: she captures and incorporates it in a work given the form of a textile net (I need my past) that hold everything in her own history along with the history of the community in which she belongs that has made her what she is today.

Without the past, no future can be generated.

The suspended installation outside the gallery in a tangle over the front door titled Neverending stories is another nest that invites viewers to follow in the artist's footsteps: a chrysalis busy building its future identity as a butterfly.

(Text by Marina Dacci)