States of (Emotional) Water

Once upon a time... there was water.
​Our very origins. What made life on Planet Earth possible.

'Good Words, Better Water' our first performance on AIB 2018. PHOTO: Hanna Kanto

For a whole week in the beginning of June, at Art Ii Biennial, we immersed ourselves in water. Water as a metaphor, an element, as the flowing current of our emotional body. Being chosen as one of the artist for Art Ii Biennial 2018, States of Matter, truly felt like an honour and like an important turning point for me personally. My work is more and more about embracing healing practices combined with art. Here, this merging of high quality creative acts with high quality healing frequencies, felt natural and welcome. 

Rippling waves with healing intentions were sent to bless the waters everywhere.

The creative process we went through was reflecting the states of water on Earth all too well. Originally our project, titled the 'Bottled Water Exports' was born with my dear friend and performing artist, Kate Gane, from Australia. We would finally get to collaborate! We would first work with art and healing in Finland, then in Australia. This was a vision that would reach around the globe. Kate is a sensitive soul living in close communion with the Earth. And she got ill. As Mother Earth is being polluted and abused by us humans, in the need for shifting our unbalanced actions, Kate's body become a vessel of transformation through cancer. She was unable to come. 

Empty fortune cookie. Message received

​Staying energetically connected with Kate to continue from a distance, we got a new collaborator in the mix, a third continent, to come perform with me in flesh and blood. Performance artist Ignacio Pérez Pérez, from Venezuela, currently on strike(!) and living in Helsinki, agreed to jump into the unknown with me. The conditions were different than initially planned. Instead of a few weeks working together, we only got some days. Even as the biennial started we were still finding our way through. Like the empty fortune cookie I got as we ate Chinese for lunch one day, the higher plan was made clear: trust your inner knowing.  

Ignacio's fortune cookie. Different message. Connected meaning.

The liberation came as we liberated the creative process.
Our collaboration took wing as we let it have free form.
​We need to stop trying too hard to actually let magic happen.

 The flow of life guides us when we let it breathe and move freely through. 
​It can truly be magical when this holistic process of life, art,
​healing and breathing becomes one. 

Raquel Sakristan: Floating Structure. Made with local people with disabilities.

​We got to breathe art and witness beauty.
To be complex humans through simple interactions.
We got to be with water, celebrating it's many qualities and possibilities.
​
THANK YOU!

---

As we are living through such demanding times,
the invisible message from my fortune cookie is truly important.
Please paint this into your heart:

Trust your own knowing.
Trust your intuition.
Trust that you are here for a very good reason,
even when it can be hard to see it
at this very moment.

With so much love and tenderness, 

Meri

​P.S. More professional photos will be coming later. Video clips as well. This blog post shares part of our process with simple images and honest reflections.