INNER SPACE – Dana Neilson

A ceramic installation on memory, imagination and the subconscious through the lens of Gaston Bachelard’s 1958 book The Poetic of Space.

The Poetics of Space is a phenomenological interrogation into the meaning of spaces in which Bachelard presents a psychic interpretation of „home,„ and one’s s prototypical experiences of personal space. Bachelard discusses the way our perceptions of shelter begin to delineate the very essence of how we think and imagine. Inner Space, using this text as a starting point, explores the symbolic meaning of home as tied to memory, intimacy and experience. The mobile replica of the solar system is based on one line from the book „our house is our corner of the world…it is our first universe „. The planets are replaced with slip casts of everyday items with personal and universal connotations.

On the Other Side – „The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring „
Are they coming up or going down? Is something hiding there? Portals? A loose allegory of our dark and rarely glimpsed subconscious which proposes a curious notion of the possibility of an alternate world.

Canadian Dana Neilson currently resides in Helsinki where she is completing her Master’s of Visual Culture and Contemporary Art at Aalto University. Originally a photographer (BFA Concordia University, 2010) her practice often includes ceramics and multimedia sculpture. Her work circumnavigates personal histories ; nostalgia, cultural and landscape heritage, sentimental value and wonder.