Plants, Healers: Deep Sleep

The series Plants, Healers: Deep Sleep consists of sleep-inducing medicinal plants that the artist collected over the course of two summers in her home region, the Turku archipelago, and around her studio in Berlin (imperforate St John's-wort, field horsetail, small-leaved linden, valerian, meadowsweet, common hop, rosebay willowherb, chamomile, raspberry, common St John's wort). “Suffering from insomnia from time to time, I feel grateful to these plants for many well-slept nights”, Salonen admits.

Healers have relied on herbs for centuries. In the Finnish tradition of tietäjät (seers/healers), the knowledge of the required medicinal plant was often obtained from a sprite during sleep. An imaginative idea of interspecies communication through dreams is glimpsed in the works.