Residency

Saara Ekström

23.-31.5.2020
Seili

Saara Ekström continued to film the meadows of Seili during the summer 2020, focusing her camera this time on the sheep grazing on the island. As she writes:

“the meadow is a borderline sanctuary between the wild and the cultivated, where nature and the cultural landscape co-exist. On the island a small flock of eight sheep are busily grazing the seaside meadows, maintaining these rich and diverse habitats for the insects and plants that thrive in them. The sheep are brought to the island in early spring and they stay until late autumn. While left to their own devices, they widen their territory from the sunny meadows to the old windswept forests, where they find cooler spots and dig sleeping places between tree roots.

The sheep seem to go through a transformation, from domestic into something autonomous, integrating into the ecologies of their surroundings. Likewise, the 200-year-old cherrytree orchard appears to slowly blend in with the forest. In the spring the orchard emits a strange kind of music, like a polyphonic choir of insect wings, as thousands of pollinators swarm around the fragrant blossoms.”