HÄNTIÄ - TAILS
Photo reportage of a home ruled by animals
Häntiä - Tails is a pop-up exhibition concept which is fast and easy to set up and could be done practically anywhere.
The whole concept is a series of various number of mobile phone pictures by Mylène Meursault and Mikko Keinonen. The main subject of the pictures is their four cats - sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by each other or by other species including hens, ducks, a rabbit and various humans.
The exhibition structure and the number of pictures depends on the space available. The images are sized from a postcard to A3 and together they form a collage which is very flexible. Sometimes the exhibition is one room dedicated to cats, sometimes one wall, sometimes individual pictures or groups of images placed all around where there's available space. Typical number of pictures is 100-200.
Stylewise Häntiä - Tails could be called anything. Because of the subject it is like social media taken out of the digital world back to more traditional forms of communication. If the concept was taken to a gallery, it could be defined as high modern art concept which could be even considered a parody of both art concepts and social media. In a cafe this concept would appear as decoration and light entertainment.
On the other hand the concept has a strong documentary dimension and as a public family album it could be even called anthropological - especially knowing that for cat owners the cats are humans, too.
Anyway, for us as artists the genre question is sort of interesting but not really relevant. We just honestly felt that such an exhibition would be a nice idea. It also seems that quite many people agree because at least the whole thing makes them smile.
And whatever the result is, there's at least a lot of love behind each picture and the whole concept.
There's also a video which reveals the life behind all those pictures. It's also available for exhibitions.
