Self Portrait with a Deer
Saana Inari
VideoMarch 27 – April 9, 2014
The video depicts a story about a mental dilemma. The protagonist is trying to escape by adopting the roles and forms of different animals. After several failures she has to accept her own limitations in order to be able to continue her journey.
Inari uses personal reflections from real encounters with animals as metaphors in her story. The name Self Portrait With a Deer refers to a photograph of the same name. In the image Inari holds a deer; in the video this deer represents fear. Both visual media deal with the artist’s connection to wild animals.
Video was shot on the location of Kunstraum Bethanien in Berlin on April 2011.
About the Artist
Saana Inari (born 1983 in Eura, Finland) works with multimedia installations, video art, animation, illustration, performance and photography – often combining several techniques simultaneously.
Her work is dreamlike, drawing strong and continuous inspiration from movement and anatomy. She often incorporates animal figures into her work as metaphors for human feelings and states of being.
Using emptiness as a space for thought, she thinks that a sense of poetry arises from leaving things unfinished and subtly surreal. In live installations, she aims at a direct physical and emotional affect on the viewer.
Inari graduated from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki with an MA in media arts and sculpture. She lives and works in Berlin.
Funding provided by Visuaalisen Taiteen Keskus Frame