Kaarina uses her own experiences as a starting point for exploring big life issues such as death, memory and memorial, which will have a particular resonance in Fabrica, a former church. As a Finn, Kaikkonen sees ‘the boat’ as both an everyday object and a symbol of human passage, representing physical and metaphysical journeys. The shape of the boat will be formed by suspending hundreds of jackets on long ropes, from one end of the gallery to the other. Fabrica is working closely with a local hospice to collect enough jackets for the piece.

"I think that all my works with jackets deal with the existence of a human being, or rather my idea of it. Humankind is just a very tiny part of the natural world, with no special rights to think of ourselves as more important than anything else – this is one of the reasons why I make landscapes out of jackets. But also, I like the feeling of an old jacket, the feeling of someone having worn it, and somehow a jacket is also a feeling of my father, who died suddenly when I was a child, in front of my eyes." Kaarina Kaikkonen