The things we are made of: Elina Vainio

Reset

Elina Vainio’s Reset is a delicate sand installation which draws attention to the cycle of matter and the limits of human understanding.  

Reset is an installation made of sand, spread as a thin carpet on the floor of the exhibition space. On the surface of the clearly delimited sand layer, you can see ribbon-like bulges and dips that resemble fossils and the tracks they have left on the sediment. The forms can also be seen as wavy handwriting. They are like silent clues or writing that we cannot interpret. The work of art reminds us of how many things there are that we do not understand and that can only be expressed to a limited extent through language. 

The name of the installation and the exhibition, Reset, refers to continuous re-settling or solidification – the cycle of matter and transformation. Each grain of sand in the installation has at some point been ground off from rock or fossil-based matter and will continue to transform with the movements of seas and the Earth’s crust. In the installation, the grains of sand settle, for a little while, into the form chosen by the artist.  

Elina Vainio (b. 1981) is a visual artist who lives and works in Helsinki. In her artistic creation, she especially focuses on the boundaries drawn between culture and nature. In her opinion, people’s tendency to see themselves as something permanent and separate from nature is misleading. With installations that consist of only a few elements, Vainio draws the spectator’s attention to how both people and the surrounding world are in a constant state of flux. 

Photo: Ville Mäkilä, Museum Centre of Turku.