Opening Reception: Lead Me Out of Here (Even if I don't know such a place exists)

Join us for the opening reception to celebrate the opening of Onerva Luoma: Lead Me out of here (even if I Do not Know if such a Place Exists).

The exhibition consists of paintings made on clothes, which can be borrowed or “checked out” from the Laboratory Gallery.

The work explores what a meaningful relationship with clothing might look like in an environmental catastrophe and how we might see clothes as something more than commodities, objects to be bought and sold.

Onerva Luoma is a Helsinki-based artist and costume designer. The centerpiece of her work is play. For her, play means malleable rules, voluntariness, discovery through making and reflection, being enthused and inspired by mistakes, and being driven by a process without foreboding the outcome.

In Luoma’s work, play is intertwined with recycled materials. She does not want to dominate the material, but cooperate with it, sometimes even to the point of herself being dominated by it, because she believes that this is the only way to disclose the radically new. Recurring themes in Luoma’s work include characterhood, chaos, outsiderness, girlhood, and tensions between impulse and control.

Meet the artist, check out the clothing, and be among the first to check out your favorite piece.