A South African artist became intoxicated from a Finnish smoke sauna and pet meadows – the results can now be seen at Kiasma

First you will be met by a strong tarry room smell. It surprises Kiasma in the bright showroom on the fifth floor, it seems to be somehow in the wrong place.

In the same way, the entire exhibition, which has taken over the museum’s clinically light spaces with structures assembled here and there from sand and clay, plays an exciting discordant chord. At first glance, they look a bit unfinished.

I smell the tracks lead to the smoke sauna in Pirkanmaa.

South African artist Dineo Seshee Raisibe Popape spent time in the summer in Hämeenkyrö a year ago and gathered impressions for his exhibition commissioned by Kiasmaa. The stay was longer than planned, lasting a week.

“I wanted to smell, walk barefoot, learn local wisdom,” Bopape tells HS on the opening day of the exhibition in Kiasma. “The smoky smell of the sauna was hugely inspiring.”

Bopape closes his eyes and stays silent for a while, seems to immerse himself in Finnish rural atmosphere or something even more distant. He smiles with a warm voice: “Yeee…”

The same slightly absent jump to memories was also experienced a moment earlier at the press conference where Bopape spoke about his work.

Bopapen spiritual, poetic and political art is on the rise internationally.

In the recently concluded solo exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, the essence was the movement of water, reproduced through a three-channel video work.

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“I’m interested in the memory of water, the memory of the earth, the memory of flowers.”

“MoMA’s and Kiasma’s exhibitions are united by the fact that the central aspect of both is remembering the past through nature,” says Bopape. “I’m interested in the memory of water, the memory of the earth, the memory of flowers.”

Bopape makes his art through the basic elements: earth, air, water, fire.

Remembering reaches out in many directions: one’s own traditions, the story of one’s family, the African diaspora in general, and South Africa’s racial history in particular.

At the gates of sleep exhibition Kiasma doesn’t push information, but invites the viewer to sit in the middle of a structure that simulates a South African yard, in a white plastic chair, and surrender to their senses.

Awareness of one’s own roots and the history of South Africa and the entire continent runs as a red thread through Bopape’s production. In his previous works, he has collected material from, for example, West Africa, regions from which people were taken as slaves. The soil for Kiasma’s works is mostly obtained from nearby.

The timing of the Helsinki exhibition brings its own dimension to the works: land ownership. The country and the history it carries have been fought for more than a year and a half now in a bloody manner in Ukraine. And soon after the exhibition opened, a shocking war broke out between Israelis and Palestinians, once again.

The exhibition is curated by the chief curator of Kiasma’s changing exhibitions João Laiawho traveled with the artist Frantsila’s organic herb farm Hämeenkyrö. The group also included an artist Anna Bear-Cormier and the Swiss curator of the exhibition that continues from Kiasma to the Migros Museum in Zurich Micheal Birchall.

Bopape praises Frantsila’s atmosphere and praises the place as downright magical: “I was received so softly”, he praises.

Warm words also flow in the other direction: the artist Anna Karhu-Cormier, who worked as a guide and plant expert at the place, characterizes Bopape as a “special quality person” who sensed things sensitively and allowed herself to take time for new experiences. Swimming was especially pleasant, which became a ritual with clay treatments. For a South African, it was exotic that you could only take a dip in the lake.

Karhu-Cormier specializes in sensory and place-related art. The founders of the Frantsila organic herb farm in the 1980s Virpi Raipala-Cormier and James Cormier are his in-laws. They were also involved in Bopape’s process. Anna Karhu-Cormier feels that “the end result includes the plant’s knowledge and healing frequency”.

The French introduced their South African guest to meadows, fields and forests. They showed him sacred trees, such as over four hundred years old Tim’s pine treeand took a sauna in a smoke sauna.

“On the first evening, we sat by an over a hundred-year-old sauna on the shore of Lake Kirkkojärvi, and Bopape took over the place by singing. It was a beautiful way to land in the place,” says Anna Karhu-Cormier.

The song belongs to Bopape’s works, and it is also present in Kiasma. The singing partner is Anna Karhu-Cormier and the subject of the song is pet flowers. There are several explanations for that.

So let’s move on from a plastic chair to a wooden bench by Kiasma’s big window, flooded with northern light.

In front of the bench there are sand pets that look like thick gingerbreads, on which beeswax has been smeared. Beeswax is a substance that, in connection with art, automatically brings to mind German Joseph Beuys (1921–1986). For Beuys, wax represented warmth.

But more than wax, Bopape wants to talk about flowers. Second summer was an unprecedented year for pets in Hämeenkyrö. The fields glowed a deep blue. The pet’s name is forget-me-not in English, which fits the theme of remembering.

“Flowers often represent the feminine side in culture,” Bopape states and explains about the contact with previous generations, about how in the South African tradition ancestors and foremothers can come to give advice to those still living through intermediaries.

Recently, contact with his mother’s relatives has been particularly close to him, as a symbol of which he has added Raisibe to his name. It refers to a strong woman.

Before the Kiasma exhibition, Bopape participated in the Helsinki Biennale. His gestureless sculpture I re-member Mama (I remember mothers) was placed at Kauppatori, near the departure point of the biennale boats.

“My own life includes the lives of my predecessors, and I think a lot about what to do with memories, with all that knowledge.”

Stay At Frantsila’s herb farm in Hämeenkyrö, they also learned something new about the healing powers of flowers.

“I mostly knew the little brown bottles, the Bach flower drops,” Bopape says with a smile and refers to the doctor-homeopath Edward Bachin to the extracts developed in the 1930s, which are still sold around the world.

“In France, I learned practically how to extract nourishing ingredients from flowers.”

Kiasma the wafting room scent includes pets, juniper and tar, among other things. Bopape also developed his own dreamy herbal tea in Hämeenkyrö. It contains, for example, blackcurrant and rye malt, as well as rosemary, which is Bopape’s own favorite herb at the moment. There are many stories associated with rosemary, and one of its many properties is said to be a memory refresher.

In addition to sand, the whole of Kiasma has greenish clay, which was brought from Hämeenkyrö from the bottom of Kirkkojärvi.

The earth also carries memory and memories, says Bopape and refers to the South African tradition, according to which, for example, minerals are bound to ancient knowledge.

He is not the only contemporary artist interested in minerals. In the same footsteps, for example, he is known for his performances Marina Abramović. He has built works of large crystals, recently, for example, a crystalline one the Wailing Wall to Kyiv Ukraine (Crystal Wall of Crying2021) in commemoration of the massacre of Jews in Babi Jar. Abramović is currently having a big exhibition at the Royal Academy in London.

Abramović has spoken about the healing power of crystals, and Bopape Kiasma is also on the trail of healing in his exhibition.

You can familiarize yourself with Bopape’s thinking in an interview that was conducted at the Milan exhibition last year. A song is playing there too.

Dineo Seshee Raisibe Bopape: (on) this cure – a portfolio, 2024 bags, Kiasman 5. krs.