Works, practices, projects, videos
The Act of Care
The Act of Caring is a poetic performance of care’s embodiment, where the care receiver and the care giver interrelate birthing together a movement expression through touch and support. The act of care is always an agreement between two people. One realise that needs help and the other decide to help. That’s how two people that doesn’t know each others get to share an intimate moment where the person in need get witnessed and supported. To care for IS touching and supporting, which is life’s fundamental experience. Nobody would be in this planet without touch, we are born and stay alive because of touch.
The Act of Caring is part of Gabriela’s Mother-project, a forth performances series and artistic research, 2023-2024. The Mother-project brings out, clear the space, sow, establish and engage in practicing mothering: care and support. It raises care as a collective experience and as a vital condition for a sustainable society. First performance on the 5.12 at 17.00 at Ateneum Museum.
The Act of Revealing
This video is part of the live-dance performance The Act of Revealing. The video is a reflection and a dialogue between nature, including the human body as nature. This work is part of Mater-project that create spaces for collective care though performance art.
For this video we work and research in nature about presence, supporting and touching as a way of being in listening of nature and reseting own body as nature as well.
The Act of Revealing performance Tracers at Stoa Gallery-Helsinki. October 2023.Performers: Taru Koski, Riina Huhtanen, Gabriela Ariana Aldana.
The working group work financed by the Arts Promotion Centre of Finland and by Helsinki City.
Weave: Memento Mortis
Weave, memento mortis, is an artistic research and installation- performance, that observe and unfold movement from the experience of perceiving the fields that weave own body and environment. To understand from the body the connections of this weave I consider also some of the information we have about cosmology and embryology through somatic movement practice. All of this is strongly supported by my work with Dream-field, that I share in workshops from time to time.
The installation is a joint work with photographer Pauliina Runola.
The performance invite participants to rest together and, from this space of resting, to reflect in some of the aspects of my research expressed in movement and poem-songs.
by breathing, by resting,
by sensing.
Crossing the threshold
I read with my cells
the movements of my spine.
Held by the frozen presence
the bones and the branches
return to me
and I return to them
I hear the trembling of life
is woven in my flesh and bones
I am that trembling as well
It is soft and furious
It has the voice of vastness
The soil, the mist, the cloud
return to me
and I return to them
and you breath me
Weave: Memento Mortis Soundscape
Welcome to listen Ancestors Song
Welcome to listen Lament song
Nahka: Animal Skin
An instalation-performance born from the visual artist Kaisu Koivisto and the performance artist and dancer Gabriela Ariana. The installation reflect on the themes of the layers of memories in own body as nature and in nature around and in the meeting point and crossing over of the birth by nature and the made by humans. The performance will be held at the Park of Lapinlahti Bay in Helsinki during August 2022 and later at Nuuksio National Park during September
We carry the memories of the beginning of Earth. We are made by recycled material of nature. There is nothing in us that is not but nature, Gabriela Ariana-2018
Hongatar Project
Hongatar Project is a research on ecosomatic practice, movement and voice integrating Earth-based knowledge: dream work and trance.
The first part of the project focus on observing and started during May 2022. The idea of observing what it is, what we have already, what is happening just for the fact of being in nature. Being aware of the changes and of the needs that the different changes rise up. Other practices I work on I have called them: deep listening, deep observation and the practice that I learn in my years of Aikido practitioner Embryonic breathing and also lately with Satu Palokangas.
I start by bringing awareness about the state of my bodymind in the moment, then I observe: the space around, the space in, the communication and exchange between them, just observing.Sensing deeply, the feeling is that the performance is there and I just dis-cover it, make it seen, through my practice. The performances where at Nuuksio-Finland during July 2022.
Traces from the Hongatar performance, July 2022
Tracers from Hongatar-project/Practice, June 2022
Hongatar-project, performance at Haltia-Nature Center main exhibition, August 2022
Project: Over the land of the Bear. March-December 2021
This is a project about how as human we inhabit Earth and how, going through the layers of the body we can get deeply sensitive and aware of how much we influence our environment and, at the same time, how much our environment is influencing us.
In this project also, I work with issues of belonging/not belonging, from own experiences of 21 years as an immigrant in Finland and how the connection with nature rises up body memories. My movements, my presence, the sounds/songs I give birth, are about expressing the experience of nature connection, which it is a continues exchange, a cycle itself, of getting deep in ones origin.
The memories of the body awake, deeper and deeper, more far away memories that can take me even more far. The movement, the voice are bringing this memories to the present moment and became the present moment expression towards the future, still, everything is here and just here.
What this past memories as present expression bring and the will of expressing them, even through the difficulties and pains, is what creates the print I am letting to the memory of nature. Maybe one day my imprinted memories will need to be rise up for others and I hope those prints will serve them well.
This project is financed by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. My work includes ecosomatic practices through movement, dance, singing, field-art and writing.
Over the Land of the Bear project’s videos:
”Dancing the unseen, singing the unsaid”
Performed by the musician and violin player Tuomas Rounakari and Gabriela Ariana on the October 7th 2021 at the opening of Kokkola’s Winter dances-Festival.
Mentoring program in Ecosomatic art and education
Working day, exploring. With the Chilean artist Leslie Apablaza. Reflecting on the project Nature in me, at the Mentoring program of ecological art and education, that I hold here in Finland. Video: Karoliina Hautajärvi. The artist Leslie Apablaza was financed by the National Arts Foundation of Chile to be part of this program.
Winter research, on snow memories, voice, breath and movement
Today was one day more of practice. It is winter in Finland at -27 celsius. Connecting with nature. The ice and the snow possesses an ancient energy, something that could relate me with an era before humanity exist and, at the same time, something that relates us with a far future, when everything will became again like that. My body felt amazed and thankful for the winters deep pause, the silent, the simplicity of the landscape. In the snow field where nobody has walked yet, own print became clear and reminds me that, that’s how it happens, we are always living prints in every step we make, all of us. Influencing and changing nature. And we can choose what print we want to let behind, at least at certain level. Video: Karoliina Hautajärvi.
Practice day with our collective on TOUCH, giving-receiving cycle, belonging and not belonging themes.
The tree of shame
The tree of shame, it is a choreography- installation and music performance. The performance explore on the theme of shame and the possibility and necessity to express it as a way to recycle the body from it. At the same time we are connecting this situation with the situation of climate crisis that reflects the state of human beings. The performance’s short text is in Finnish language. Choreographer: Gabriela Ariana Music: Tuomas Rounakari and Gabriela Ariana Dancers: Riina Huhtanen, Taru Koski, Jukka Tarvainen Caisa cultural center, Helsinki-Finland. August 2019.
Tree of shame-rehearsals
The video under is from a rehearsals of The tree of Shame. Practicing with voice, contact, sensitiveness on the theme of shame in the body and moving shame. Dancers: Taru Koski, Riina Huhtanen and Jukka Tarvainen. Choreographer: Gabriela Ariana. Video: Karolina Hautajärvi. August 2019.
Mujer Sola (practice)
Navigating through the movements, nourished by the surrounds and by the inside perceptions of own body, sensing the presence of own bones and of all what is liquid inside, letting them communicate and letting the body just react. More than the result what interest me is the experience and sharing the experience of searching. Video: Ville Syrjäläinen, Drums and voice: Gabriela Arina (To hear the full song click on the next video)