Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery. London // Nov 21, 2014

Our pasts are powerfully tied to our present, the lives of all our ancestors before us leading to where we are today. Imagine that past now. Imagine herds of wild bison, the broad flat plains of America; imagine the smell of a new forest, the unbroken view of the great Atlantic Ocean marking the end of the world as you know it. Now let us refocus, zoom out of this great continent and shift our gaze east, further, further across the water, up through Europe and the Baltic Sea until we reach the Arctic Circle. There, under the crown of the world, see snowy storms and endless tundra. Elk and reindeer travel across great frozen lakes under the electric dance of the Northern Lights. Both histories are home to two indigenous peoples, children of the dawn of the world who still remain, vibrant and alive, even when modern life and endless colonisation have changed the face of the globe. So it is that :Mimicry: (21st of November - 20th of December) draws on the two very different yet compellingly complementary heritages of Native mixed artist Monica Canilao and Laplander Outi Pieski.

This installation perhaps sums up the spirit of  Mimicry. "Imagine: you enter a forest, and would like to see, to meet, an animal, perhaps," explains Pieski. "As you continue along your way, you observe the landscape around you - the scenery changes, yet still you see no signs of life. Then, quite suddenly, you see an opening through the trees, like a portal into the deepest depths of the forest. There, you see an animal walking unobserved along its own path. It stops for a second, and looks your way. Perhaps, for an instant, your gazes meet. Then you each continue along your own separate paths, perhaps changing your step ever so slightly because of this meeting. Elsewhere in the forest you often see the footprints of people, other people, walking from somewhere else than you and going to a different destination." Here, within<i>Ruossalas Bálágat | Crossing Paths, the viewer can perhaps experience a transcendental encounter, or perhaps simply cross paths with another traveler. For this is what both Canilao and Pieski seek to do. Their journeys are long, stretching far back to their forebears, but they also continue into the present day - they reveal lives and histories that are vibrant, vivid and alive. Perhaps, they tell us, the past is never truly gone, but rather, like the dappled hide of a forest deer as it blends into the shadows of trees or the white fur of an Arctic fox, visible against the snow drifts only by the tips of its ears, it is there, living and breathing, right in front of your eyes, if only you knew where to look.