SEL2020HEL Diary

NANA & FELIX, 2021
NO ISBN

12 filebinders,
each approx. 35x235x170mm

All together in protective case:
approx. 460x235x170 mm

Materials:
Digital prints, Inkjet Prints, Pen on paper, file binder, protective case

Editions of 30 + A.P 2
numbered and signed

The artist book, and exhibition, SEL2020HEL Diary chronicles the year 2020. Documenting the making of a yearlong series of date paintings in which the daily air quality readings of Helsinki and Seoul translate into colour, the diary mixes personal events with global, unfolding as a one-year time-scape.

Every morning of the year 2020, we monitored and recorded the air quality readings of the previous day in both of our home cities, Seoul and Helsinki. Based on this data we painted two monochromatic paintings, amounting to a total of 732 paintings, or, 366 pairs. The canvas on the left represents Seoul and the one on the right, Helsinki. We then painted the corresponding date so that it extends over both canvases, tying both the paintings and the cities together. Through this gesture, we try to give a concrete form, acrylic paint on canvas, to something as abstract as air quality data. The completed installation is a calendar of the year 2020, a colour-chart landscape that is made of, and portrays, the air pollution of the total 366 days of the year.

The exhibition we present at einbuch.haus concentrates on the artist book-diary that we, in tandem with the paintings, have been preparing during the year. Starting as an act of documentation, the diary quickly came to embody the more personal side of the project, filled with personal remarks next to political; climatic observations next to economical.

A year ago, as we were about to start the working process, we knew that the project would demand full dedication of the entire year, entailing near complete social isolation. What we did not know was that a global pandemic would force pretty much the entire world into similar conditions. In an odd and surprising way, SEL2020HEL became a documentation of a pandemic – seen through air quality.

TEXT: NANA & FELIX

NANA & FELIX

Over the years, Nana & Felix have developed a distinctive working method, creating artworks under larger, themed projects. Each separate body of work has its own sub-theme that both supports and challenges the main project. This dialectical approach stems from their situation of living between two countries and cultures. All their projects are conditioned by, and reflect on this duality; a sense of never entirely belonging and being trapped in between.

This constant effort of untangling results in works that draw parallels between their situation and the surrounding world. Through a mix of parody, irony, and contradiction the artist duo portrays the global world they were born into. They actively borrow, appropriate, and rework ideas of traditional and cultural imagery, mixing them up with referents found in modern and contemporary art.

www.nana-felix.com
@nanaandfelix

Stiftung Kunstfonds, das NEUSTART KULTUR-Programm and Arts Promotion Centre Finland.

Vorspiel Transmediale & CTM 2021

1 – 7 pm (Thursday, Friday: 11, 12. Feb)
1 – 7 pm (Tuesday – Friday : 15 – 26. Feb)
12 – 5 pm (Saturday)

and by appointment

einbuch.haus / Florastraße 61, 13187 Berlin

info@einbuch.haus