Anni Puolakka (born 1983 in Oulu, Finland) is based in Helsinki and makes performances, videos, installations, drawings and texts in which situation-specific or documentary materials are incorporated into fictional worlds. Artist’s solo exhibition Feed, which was a part of 14th Baltic Triennial, happened at project space Editorial, where we are located. Because of that, we share Anni Puolakka’s literature recomandations:

Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995) by Octavia E. Butler

This collection of science fiction stories and essays features fascinating and uneasy, complicated bonds between humans and other agents. You will find cross-species impregnation, aliens who are both caring and controlling as well as a speech-eradicating virus. After each story Butler reflects on it. I feel her writing pulls me into the stories like they are dreams that feel real. This kind of science fiction supports my own imagination about what could be.

Roman Charity – Queer Lactations in Early Modern Visual Culture (2017) by Jutta Gisela Sperling

Situations and representations of lactation interest me. They can be banal, caring, exploitative, painful, erotic, or transgressive. There are different intentions and mental experiences involved. In this book Sperling explores the agencies of historical images of suckling. The book focuses especially on a scene that was represented in hundreds of paintings from Renaissance and Enlightenment time Europe: a grown-up child breastfeeding their parent. It attempts “to understand why and how early modern viewers found an incestuous adult breastfeeding scene good to think with, and aims at expanding and queering our notions of early modern sexuality.” It feeds my desire to dig deeper into the topic of lactation, approaching it from historical and contemporary angles. 

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (2009) by Olga TokarczukI 

I love this story and its main character. They make me feel excited about being alive in co-existence with other animals, about ageing and about reading. I enjoy the most art that has homeliness and warmth to it, as well as mystery and complication, passion. I almost burst when I hold this book in my mind. I wish you will read it in case you haven’t, yet. 

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Main picture: Anni Puolakka’s photo from personal archive.
Exhibition pictures: Ugnius Gelguda