Knowledge, 2025

Topelius Park, Sipoo

Sculpture 450 × 120 × 90 cm
Light projection approx. 5 × 8 m (to be completed later)
Patinated copper, painted steel, plants, LED lights, gobo light projectors

At the top of a mound in Topelius Park, among the trees, stands an organic, plant-like sculpture. From the stem of angelica grows the flowering stalk of comfrey. A grass snake coils around the hybrid plant and raises its head toward the sky.

Knowledge is based on traditional medicinal plants and animals of rural heritage. The work highlights nature as a source of knowledge and healing substances.

Medicinal plants used in folk medicine form a new, unique hybrid species in the sculpture. Encircling this plant is a grass snake, traditionally a resident and benefactor of farmyards. Together, these elements form a sculpture reminiscent of the Rod of Asclepius, the symbol of medicine and pharmacies.

The work is situated in a park area between two institutions that disseminate knowledge: a school and a library. Traces of the former farm once located on the site are suggested by traditional yard tree species and by landforms referring to the building’s stone foundation.

The sculpture illuminates itself and its surroundings. In the dark, colored lights placed inside the flowers illuminate the lower parts of the work and the ground at its base. Light has traditionally been associated with knowledge: light reveals and shows things, and things can be illuminated by telling about them.

The plant elements of the sculpture are made primarily of copper. Copper is a warm-toned, antibacterial noble metal whose color varies depending on patination. In the work, copper appears both shiny and patinated in brown and green hues.

In spring, a collection of locally native medicinal plants will be planted at the base of the sculpture.

The work will later be complemented by a gobo light projection on the park-facing exterior wall of the nearby Topelius Hall. In the projection, presented in the form of a traditional botanical chart, the plant hybrid depicted in the sculpture and its parts are shown, along with a motif formed by the grass snake and the angelica.