Jenni Toivonen: The Carries Flowers

“Have you learned the secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, in the mountains and in the ocean, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the glimmer of the future.”

In the Atlantic Rainforest in Brazil runs a river, where Toivonen’s ancestors used to bathe nearly a century ago. The Finnish migrants were seeking to lead a life in harmony with nature. The waters of the clear mountain river were believed to provide renewal for the human spirit while connecting the body with the non-human realm. The ancestors didn't need stone temples because the Living Temple was beneath their feet and above their heads.The River Carries Flowers is an ode and an offering to the river, the forest and the animate world inhabiting it. Through an exploration of cultural memory and heritage, the artist seeks to build bridges between the past and the present and to connect with Mother Earth, the living and breathing world beyond the human.

According to most indigenous worldviews, entities such as rivers and forests are believed to own a specific spirit to them. Plants and spirits work in reciprocity and are grateful for the respect shown to them. Placing flowers into a body of water is an ancient, cross-cultural ritual used for purification, healing, and honoring the divine. It serves as a respectful offering to ancestors, deities, or nature spirits. To give an offering to water is to acknowledge the interconnectedness of life – as a drop of water runs in the veins of a tree in Brazil, it is simultaneously connected to the waters that caress the Finnish shorelines.

The exhibition consists of photographs with meaningful interventions that symbolize the entangled nature of the web of life. As a ritual, the exhibition pays tribute to water as a source of life, highlighting its transience and focusing on the reconnection with nature's rhythm – As flowers bloom in their own time, flowing with the river is to trust the process and nature’s timing. A river is not just water; it is a prayer in motion that teaches us to flow.