Buni Buana (Hidden World)

Salonen collected various natural elements during her artist-in-residence in Java, Indonesia: rocks, plants, soil, volcanic ash as well as seashells, and pieces of dead corals drifted ashore. From each element, the artist distilled or ground a colour sample onto a microscopic slide. In addition, she painted images of nature spirits on the slides with transparent paint. These painted spirits, related to the animist worldview, become visible only through their shadows, in this way revealing a hidden layer of nature’s reality.

According to animism, for example, Indonesian and Finnish nature worship, every single plant, rock and tree is inhabited by an active agency, possibly even a spiritual consciousness, which has the right to live regardless of its instrumental utility to human needs.