Jenna Sutela (b. 1983, Finland) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Sutela uses words, sounds, and other living media, such as bacteria and slime mold, to create experimental installations and performances that bring together biology, technology and cosmology. Sutela’s recent work explores interspecies communication, aspiring to connect with a world beyond our consciousness. Sutela is currently Visiting Artist at The MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST). Recent exhibitions and presentations include Moderna Museet, Sweden (2019); Serpentine Gallery, UK (2019); Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain (2018); and Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Japan (2015).
Jenna Sutela
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Jenna Sutela, Indigo, Orange and Plum Matter (I Magma cycle), 2021. Installation view at Lush Building, Liverpool Biennial 2021. Photography: Stuart Whipps
Jenna Sutela presented an audio work titled nnother (2021), together with Elvia Wilk, at the Lewis’s Building, as well an iteration of her ongoing series I Magma (2019-ongoing) at Lush Building. All about symbiosis, nnother deals with the topic of gestation. It presents a conversation between imaginary organisms with both organic and synthetic attributes, one of whom lives inside the other. In addition to the sound piece, Sutela’s neuroplastic sculptural portrait Indigo, Orange and Plum Matter (I Magma cycle) (2021) explores the psychedelic history of technology as well as the topic of wetware, a computer-related idea applying to biological life forms. The three “lava head” glass sculptures, in the shape of the artist’s head, are filled with blobs of liquid and colour in motion. In rotation, they project a light show on the walls in the space. The work celebrates both the fluids and symbionts within us as well as the larger ecosystem that they, and we, interact with and depend upon.
nnother is co-authored with the writer Elvia Wilk and co-commissioned by Liverpool Biennial and Science Gallery London, part of King's College. Voice by Colin Self. Jenna Sutela's participation at Liverpool Biennial 2021 is supported by Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland and Frame Foundation.
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