Ancestor has materialised in Mänttä – But what is it?

Anish Kapoor’s exhibition is rapidly turning into the art event of the year in Finland. It is gaining a lot of attention in both traditional and social media. There is a rush of visitors: everyone wants to see Kapoor’s mysterious new creation. 

The artworld has its own traditional mechanisms for dealing with spectacles – and, conversely, also for distancing itself from them. The stern gatekeepers of art do not usually swallow a phenomenon that is starting to attract too much talk, hype or hassle without taking a bit out of it first. Their own more sophisticated identity is, of course, constructed by highlighting aspects that receive more restrained attention.

The naissance and constitution of a spectacle are sometimes also affected by chance. The delayed arrival of Anish Kapoor’s magnum opus simply seems to have heightened interest in it. Everyone understood that this unusual situation was due to the fact that something extraordinary was about to happen. 

The allure of the Mänttä exhibition also derives from the secrecy surrounding its principal artwork, Ancestor. Kapoor wanted the museum to say almost nothing about it in advance. We were chiefly permitted to say that it is a significant, site-specific work that is unusual in scale.

Nor did the artist want to give it too suggestive a title. This basically stems from his philosophy of art. 

If you give a piece of art a title that is too specific, such as “meteorite”, those interpreting it are already pointed in a particular direction. Even once Ancestor was completed, Kapoor has wanted to describe it primarily as a “colour field” that has come about and materialised in Mänttä, as if untouched by hand. 

Kapoor’s art is founded on mysteries. He occupies – in art historians’ jargon – the realm of the sublime or transcendent. A place where a work of art is something so dumbfounding that it cannot be described in words. 

A physical, moral, artistic or metaphysical sublime object is like a natural phenomenon that makes a human being feel small, insignificant, when faced with it.

The curator of the exhibition, Timo Valjakka, has pointed out that it is precisely this silent, wordless mystery that constitutes the ultimate ground for the spectacular nature of Kapoor’s art. The spectacle is not created mathematically by means of scale, but by the mental gravity of things.

When Kapoor himself, the curator, or the museum refuse to explain a work in any great detail, the playing field is left open to others. The materialisation of Ancestor in Mänttä has prompted people to describe both it and their own attitude to it quite freely.

Of course, the pole position is taken by the professional wordsmiths: journalists who write about art. They have been quite eloquent in describing Ancestor and their attitude to it.

Aliisa Salminen (Aamulehti) talks about “the secret of the red giant” and sees in it not only a meteorite, but also a heart, or the film sets for the Stranger Things TV series. Helen Korpak (Suomen Kuvalehti), meanwhile, talks about “a fossilized explosion and a coagulated efflorescence of blood”.

Aino Frilander (Helsingin Sanomat) – perhaps paralleling Kapoor’s own thinking – wants to think more about the emergence of an interpretation. For her, Ancestor is difficult to identify, because being “red, rough and cavernous”, it does not really admit interpretation of its surface shapes. She also further mystifies it by wondering whether it has managed to “demonstrate its nature-powered ability to cause disruption and even small-scale destruction” by ruining the museum technicians’ summer holidays.

When I personally have been going around the exhibition space, I have asked numerous visitors directly what they see in Ancestor. The answers show that there are really a great many possible interpretations. People can see almost anything in it.

Examples of individual interpretations that I have heard are: meteorite, bacterium, coral, false morel, sandstone, termite mound, a mass of potholes, a climbable monster, sandbank, tardigrade, super bowling ball, mountain, nest, womb, cave system, wishing well, skull, lump of stuff, erratic boulder, kelp, and blood cell.

Many people also begin to make out different shapes in the work’s details. I’ve heard them exclaim: “hey, there’s a fox’s head”, or: “do you see that mermaid?” 

Here, Ancestor behaves like a classic Rorschach inkblot test. Your description of it says more about your own thoughts, feelings and personality than it does about what the artist has had in mind.

Anish Kapoor often stresses that he has no particular message for the world. He contemplates the ways in which meanings come about, rather than what things mean.

When the power of an artwork is based on its mysteriousness or on something that is hard to put into words, art professionals speak of its evocativeness. The term derives from the Latin evocare, which means “to call forth”. Ancestor not only arouses strong emotions in us, but also evokes associations, conceptions or memories. When we are faced with something profound, we talk about ultimate meanings. Art comes close to religion here – but without being one.

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Read Pauli Sivonen’s previous articles about Anish Kapoor

Who is Anish Kapoor?

What is Anish Kapoor going to do in Mänttä?

Who is Anish Kapoor?

What is Anish Kapoor going to do in Mänttä?