Silja Yvette: Collective Creatures

In Collective Creatures, Silja Yvette draws attention to artificial and natural materials, as well as to the effects of mass and energy in space and time. In her photographs objects and places― from caves and abandoned buildings, to quarries, shop windows, found pieces, volcanos, and atomic events―become “collective creatures,” which make it possible to understand forces that are difficult to visualize, such as transformation, expansion, and omnipresence. There is something inherently mythical about these things that opposes the calculability desired by humans. With her strongly compositional images freed from their cultural context, Silja Yvette’s artistic process takes aim at associative contexts. Critically, and with sensitivity, she shows their relationship to the subtle permeation of microparticles and radiation on the one hand, and to the massive upheaval of the earth’s materials perpetrated by human- led corporations and human inventions.