The Forest of the Singing Three

Compelling Multidisciplinary Art Born from Interaction with Trees – Oodidoo Group’s Exhibition

The Forest of the Singing Tree is an exhibition of meditative art that contemplates the human–nature connection. At Tampere Maja, works by the Finnish Oodidoo group are on display – the first “harvest” of their ecological art project Entanglements in the Forest (2022—). The works in the exhibition bring forth meditative experiences born in the forest, in interaction with trees.

The group’s visual artists, Jaana Kortelainen and Minna Rajala, together with musician Hilkka-Liisa Vuori, explore through art what happens within themselves in the forest when they quiet down with the trees. In their art, they combine monotype printmaking and meditative silent prayer singing. The large-scale monotype prints in the exhibition were created using the group’s communal multidisciplinary method: the visual artists paint the printing plates simultaneously in vocal meditation and print them layer by layer into a single image that carries both artists’ imprint. The exhibition’s video work Singing Tree reveals the musician’s starting point for this embodied image-making. In the piece, she sings together with Johanna Korhonen.

The group began their project on Pyynikinharju ridge in Tampere, working with a turtle-barked pine. They continued at Hiisimäki in Pikkala and, in summer 2023, in Kiigeoru Sacred Grove in Tartu County, Estonia, with an old elm tree. Photographer Sandra Ruudu guided and documented the visual artists’ visit to this sacred grove known in Estonian folk tradition. Ruudu’s photographs are also included in the exhibition within Oodidoo’s art book Forest Meditation. The book was bound by artist Terhi Hursti, who also provided technical consultation to the group’s artists in framing the prints. The works are mounted on biodegradable natural materials, edged for instance with handmade Nepalese lokta paper and silk.

The Oodidoo group (2017—) is a pioneer of meditative multidisciplinary art in Finland. It was born from the realization that the members had received very similar and meaningful experiences after decades of practicing different forms of meditative art. The group’s visual artists are Vedic Art teachers; Rajala is also a teacher of traditional Japanese chado tea art, while Vuori is an expert in meditative silent prayer singing, as well as a musician, researcher, and teacher at, among other places, the Sibelius Academy.

The forest has been connected to the visual artists’ art since early on. Their artistic collaboration began as forest activists (Talaskangas 1989), when they used art to protect forests, thus becoming pioneers of Finnish forest art activism. Later, in their extensive conceptual and environmental art productions of the 1990s (Pine Forests, Animal Gallery, among others), the duo examined complex ecological questions, especially the valuing of nature. They have also worked for a long time as visual art teachers. Vuori has performed internationally in the Vox Silentii duo with Korhonen in more than a hundred churches and released 13 CDs. She is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the National Library of Finland in the Academy of Finland–funded research project Tradition and Variation.