Felicia Honkasalo (b. 1986) is a visual artist based in Helsinki, Finland.

Her work, exhibited globally, includes solo and group shows, international film screenings, and her 2019 monograph, Grey Cobalt, published by Loose Joints.

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Felicia Honkasalo — Lazarus

“Life is Wonderful, when it must crawl it crawls”

Lazarus is a multimedia installation commissioned by Helsinki Biennial. Based on the sci-fi short story Adam and no Eve by Alfred Bester (1941), the installation combines sound, moving image, sculptures and text.

Materials used are glass, artificial bodily fluids, embroidered cloth and scented oil. In the story a ruthless scientist sets off a chain reaction that destroys all life on Earth, except the smallest microorganisms living in the sea. Soon he realises the devastation he has caused and sacrifices himself to the cycle of life by crawling to the sea. The work investigates water as an element of fertility, and how we have evolved from a single-celled organism that splashed in the prehistoric oceans. Could it be that now we are heading back to where we originally came from, due to climate change? The work returns to the very basic questions plaguing the human condition: where did we come from, what are we, and what will we become? What does it mean to die, in today’s’ radically medicalised world?

The work was realised in collaboration with Töölö Hospital, Department of Plastic Surgery and Combat Divers of the Finnish Defence Forces.

Felicia Honkasalo