Reija Meriläinen

Master Longclaws tells the story of an itch that needs scratching. In it, a shape- and nameshifting nail artist Misster Longclaus is looking for intimacy in all the wrong places.

Meriläinen’s contribution to this video program is the most metaphoric representation of ideas around the human body as object. It focuses on slabs of tactile geletin, which is repeatedly stabbed with a serrated knife. This slow motion violence is arguably a reinterpretation of ideas around the body in sculpture in for example early surrealist works by Giacometti. The fleshy pink tones of the work emphasise the human aspect of the material. Here the inanimate becomes anthropomorphic.