Flies and Honey publicity photos in collaboration with Joonas Sdiri

FLIES AND HONEY - THE PROJECT

Flies and Honey emerges at the intersection of personal symbolism, ritual aesthetics and textile-based storytelling. Rooted in the transformation of the everyday, the project reimagines garments - especially the overlooked or mass-produced - as vessels of memory, resistance and self-expression.

The sweatshirt - often linked to uniformity and casual anonymity - is reclaimed as an artistic medium. Each piece becomes a tactile archive, bearing emotional weight and societal commentary. By elevating the commonplace, Flies and Honey collapses the divide between high art and everyday wear, challenging the hierarchies that govern both fashion and contemporary art.

The modularity of the textile sculptures - their ability to be assembled, disassembled and rearranged - reflects the fluidity of selfhood and the impermanence of social roles. Heraldic symbols, masks, and shields conjure ancestral narratives and speculative identities. They hint at timeless forms of protection, belonging and visibility.

Visually and thematically, Flies and Honey draws from folk traditions, puppet theatre and ritual performance. These references anchor the work in collective memory while enabling playful, critical disruptions of present-day consumer culture. The aesthetic of excess - through vibrant color, exaggerated form and dense layering - serves as both camouflage and amplification. It allows the figures to vanish into spectacle or assert themselves with ceremonial boldness.

The exhibition operates as a hybrid environment, resisting fixed definitions. It invites audiences into an unfolding ceremony, where interaction becomes part of the work itself. Photography expand the narrative, capturing performative moments that reveal the slow construction of identity through material, movement and gesture.

Ultimately, Flies and Honey frames textile as a political and poetic language - one that resists disposability, embraces contradiction and reclaims intimacy and agency in a world increasingly defined by speed, abstraction  and detachment.

Purpose and Goal. The aim is to embody a dynamic and thought-provoking concept at the intersection of art, design, and fashion. Presented in site-specific installations, the works unfold in dialogue with one another, where bodies and formations interact to create a living, narrative space.

COLLABORATIONS

Graphic work for the titling of the pieces – a kind of universal phonology
(with Jaakko Suomalainen)

A fictional system of symbols that replaces written language and represents both sound and image — each symbol possessing its own unique form and an invented pronunciation. The system aims to establish a universal mode of expression — one that invites the viewer to interpret the symbols freely by personal perception and association. Parallels can be drawn to the Rorschach test and to the structure of Roman numerals.

Through geometric operations — addition, subtraction, multiplication — each symbol evolves from the one before it, forming a visual sequence or a silent rhythm.

Every symbol carries a phonetic echo — [ eii_usc;;.huu ] — a subtle residue of voice that extends the symbol beyond the visual. The system functions as a visual–auditory hybrid alphabet, equally in text-based and digital contexts. Each sign becomes both image and impulse: a vibrating marker of presence.

Together, the symbols outline a speculative, evolving phonology — a language where form, sound, and imagination continually push the practice forward.

My fascination with systems traces back to earlier projects, especially Form Variations with the Cube as a Starting Point (Basic Design, 2000).
Through geometric transformations, the cube undergoes a series of positive and negative operations that generate new configurations.


Each variation appears as an independent form, yet all remain connectable — distinct yet related, like fragments of a shared syntax. Through repetition and systematic alteration, the process itself becomes a language.


Further development In a further phase of development, the symbol system will be integrated into a project featuring screen prints and hand-painted motifs on recycled textile garments and accessories.

The symbols will also appear in a photographic project in collaboration with Joonas Sdiri.
This work draws inspiration from Lavinia Schulz and Walter Holdt, whose expressionist costumes in 1920s Hamburg evoke retro-robotic figures and Bauhaus knights.


Similarly, the works from Flies and Honey evoke a ritual, choreographic ceremony, where two bodies gradually dress themselves in modular textile sculptures, assembling identity and form piece by piece.

In both textile and performative practice, the sounds become visual and material gestures — rhythms in pattern, structures in fabric, tactile accents, and bodily motion. Listening becomes physical: sound shifts into image, form, and space, then cycles back again.

The project continues to evolve through a collaborative video work with a choreographer and musician, expanding the themes of body, transformation, and symbolic language. The soundscape draws from phonetic echoes of the symbols, recorded both beforehand and during the performance, allowing movement and voice to merge into a polyphonic rhythm.

From this process, a video piece emerges — an organic choreography of slow motion and stillness that traces cycles of construction, dissolution, and return.

THE CORE VALUES OF JENNYVEXALA

Pleasure. Perfection is irrelevant; the process is fundamental. Embrace creative play and joy. Foster curiosity. Work with contrasts in expression, form and colour. Build imagery and stories.

Patience. Honour traditions and the craftsmanship of working by hand. Emphasise and visualise the value of a slow, meticulous process, where persistence becomes a virtue. Repetition creates space for focus and reflection.

Authenticity. Safeguard integrity and strength through consistency and sincerity. Define and express identity. Boldly explore layers, shifts and sensual contrasts.

Sustainability. Challenge and influence conventional artistic expression. Promote a more sustainable approach to the environment. Break down social norms and conventions. Reuse and the availability of materials set boundaries - limitations that in turn spark creativity and imagination.