nabbteeri whatever lives bends down

In hidden places, among rubbish and clutter, the Finnish artists Janne Nabb and Maria Teeri find material for poetic installations. Meet the artist collective nabbteeri, which fills Färgfabriken’s main hall with art that portrays the withered beauty of the garden and life’s impermanence.

When was nabbteeri born?
We started to collaborate during our time at art school. nabbteeri started as a play with words. We combined our sur­ names and thought it sounded fun, like a name of a strange organism, like bacteria or a bird.

You call yourselves a four-handed artist collective. What characterizes nabbteeri?
Along the way, nabbteeri has developed into an established way of working together, but it is hard for us to describe what the essence of nabbteeri consists of. There are so many layers in our collaboration. We call ourselves crafters, human animals that explore and think with our hands and use our bodies in dif­ ferent ways. We always have each other to present our ideas to or start a discus­ sion with. And four, instead of two, hands that can realize the things we want to do. Sharing experiences is really something all living things do.

Could you describe your artistic process and why you choose to work this way?
Our method is scavenging, which means that we roam among leftovers, garbage, traces from humans and animals, and collect and use things that others have rejected or thrown away. It started out of necessity, since we did not have many resources. And after that we have just continued to work like this. We collect materials continuously, but we also like to work with material that is found on the location for a certain exhibition. It becomes like a game. We like the ele­ment of surprise, not knowing what is going to happen.

How do you choose your material?
In search of interesting material we need as artists to be present in the moment, to use a different gaze than in everyday life. What it is that captures our attention is not always easy to explain, but some objects are vibrant and have a strange presence. Our installations are always created in a dialogue between the space and the materials. Färgfabriken’s main hall and its location at Lövholmen with its poisoned soil that has been partly cleared is crucial for us as a starting point.

How have you worked with the concept of the garden?
Our work started on a personal level. Our own garden in the Finnish country­ side is surrounded by industrial culti­ vation, roads with heavy traffic and the smell of burnt peat bogs. We think garden has potential to contain far more diverse ways of life. As artists we are exploring how we can add and under­ stand the biodiversities around us. Garden also has utopian potential. It offers a space where humans can recon­nect to the earth, learn about natural processes and learn to relate to and work for their neighbouring critters.

Why an installation over the dying garden?
Living in the countryside with your own garden has made the changes of the seasons stand out more clearly and has has strengthened the fascination for the cycle of life. Above all, the hidden part, the things you usually don’t pay attention to in the ecosystem. Instead of the gar­ den in full bloom and chirping birdsong, we want to explore another side. We open our exhibition in August that is the starting point for the darker season with the withering, dying garden.

Why did you call your exhibition “whatever lives bends down”?
The title is a fragment from the Amer­ican poet Joyelle McSweeney. We ran into her concept necropastoral at the same time as we were starting our work with the exhibition at Färgfabriken and wanted to involve it in our investigation of the garden. McSweeney talks about the necropastroral as a strange meeting place for the poet and the death and describes humans as trapped in a heavily industrialized and consumption­oriented existence. We related to that.

nabbteeri is an artist collective that observes exhibition halls from the floor level, accompanied by silverfish and crusty arthropod skins. By-products that form are fur beetle ryas, necropastoral 3D-animations, a visual landscape tracking poem or a wind chime. Insignificant, discarded matters help to think with hands, but in a messy world, searching takes time. Looking at painting is also slow. nabbteeri explores how the object world could be approached in the same lingering way and how things in the space can build up a painting. 

The amount of dirt is increasing in nabbteeri’s practice. The materials and critters they collaborate with  are unwanted surplus; the displays are connected through roughness, discomfort, meandering, or clutter. By avoiding planning nabbteeri nurtures surprises when anything may have the potential to join the art-working. The documentary and autobiographical elements of the works record the shifting polyphonic everyday life-forms. Misunderstandings are common and are passed on. 

nabbteeri lives in a rural area, on the fringes of civilization, and the languages around are largely unknown to them. Both the feeling of being outsiders, and their growing interest in unpaved land have slowly seeped into their practice. Making art could be the last operation separating the artists from exclusion. Physical exertion, the act of moving objects and soil are mediums for thought – the  humming noise of bloodstream in the middle of the contemporary brain fog.