SEATTLE
1900 Airport Way S, Seattle, WA, 98134 Opening: Sunday 28 September 2014 —————————————– Curated by Bergman & Salinas —————————————–
Cia Rinne is an artist, writer and poet. She was born in Sweden, spent her childhood and youth in Germany, as a student she moved to Helsinki and later Denmark. She is now based in Berlin. For 6 years she documented the daily lives of Roma communities in Hungary, India, Greece, Romania, France, Russia and Finland while working on a book called “The Roma Journeys” with Joakim Eskildsen from 2000-2006. Experiencing the continued switch between many languages and places brings awareness to the political and cultural implications lying in subtle gaps and shift of meanings.
Her work has been naturally influenced by Fluxus artists such as Tomas Schmit, Arthur Köpcke, Moscow Conceptualists Lev Rubinstein and Ilya Kabakov. Music plays a key role in her sensibility, exemplified by the work of Steve Reich and John Cage.
Cia studied a masters in Philosophy at the Goethe University Frankfurt where she was influenced by the writings of Hannah Arendt and did her thesis on Hans Jonas author of “The Phenomenon of Life”. Jonas argued against the human domination of nature and insisted that human survival depends on our efforts to care for our planet and its future. He wrote: “Act so that the effects of your actions are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life”. The language of philosophy can be felt in Cia’s work.
She has published two books of poetry which are both available on Ubu web. For her first book zaroum (Helsinki, 2001) Cia typewrote texts in multiple languages, intertwined with graphic elements like boxes, drawings, witty and ironic multiple-choice questions, conveying her interest in visual composition and crossing languages and genres.
Her second collection of poems Notes for soloists (OEI Editör, 2009) developed over seven years and deals with language and its acoustic qualities. This has led her to experiment with the performativity of the text both in readings and collaborations with sound artists and musicians. The partnership with Sebastian Eskildsen, sound designer at the Copenhagen Royal Theatre, gave birth to the sound work Sounds for soloists (2011-12).
Cia Rinne also shows art spaces, due to a natural affinity of the visual in her work. She was included in the Turku Biennial in 2011. Her work has been exhibited in the Grimmuseum Berlin, at Signal in Malmö, Nikolaj Kunsthal in Copenhagen, and the Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn. The exhibition at INCA here in Seattle was her first solo exhibition in the US.
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