March 13, 2019

21.03.2019 / 11.08.2019

The highly positive reception of the installation by both press and public at the Venice Biennale shows that the work was appreciated by a global audience too, and that humour as a critical artistic tool has an important place in art today.

Frieze wrote: “As we piggyback on Geb and Atum’s fact-finding mission, we meet a puppet psychologist, an eye-eating snake, and an escaping testicle, and much more, but there is sense in the senselessness, as there so often is” (Frieze). Moreover, the narrative framework of nationalism and colonialism dovetails seamlessly with an international debate around identity and postcolonialism.

The Aalto Natives is also above all an overwhelming, sensory experience. The visitor is immersed in a visual spectacle, in which the artists have thought about the combination of animatronics, video, light and audio in an innovative way.

The Aalto Natives was on display at the Cobra Museum from 15 December 2017 until 25 February 2018. Then the installation travels to Finland and is showing at the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki from 13 March until early September. After that to Borås Musum of Modern Art in marsch 2019. A version of the installation will be shown as part of an exhibition of Nathaniel Mellors at the New Museum in New York 2019.

Curator: Eva Eriksdotter