GALLERY ASKI: KIRSI-MARJA MOBERG – SPEECHLESS

Asemic writing is a way of looking inward into the act of writing itself. What can be found when one creates or reads a text without language?

The Speechless is a body of work that explores asemic writing, an expressive form based on shapes, rhythms, and image-like marks, free from the rational meanings of language.

“In this exhibition, I investigate the feeling of being without words. Throughout my life, this feeling has taken many forms and appeared at different stages, beginning with the stutter I experienced in childhood. Through these works, I imagine language and propose meanings for it. I think of the works as visual poems, though each viewer is free to interpret them from whatever perspective or genre they choose. My intention is that the exhibition invites viewers to let go of linguistic reasoning and discover meanings through their own experience of looking.”

“The works were created between 2024 and 2026 using mixed media and letterpress printing, a relief-printing technique. The mixed-media pieces were made with Indian ink and assembled from selected and partly found materials, including old plastic sheets and natural materials. Their distinctive surfaces create a hologram-like image that shifts when viewed from different angles, like smoke signals changing in response to the viewer’s movement.”

“The letterpress prints were produced at So_Helsinki and the printmaking workshops of Aalto University using old relief-printing presses and typographic punctuation marks. Working with these presses is both meticulous and physical; producing a single edition requires considerable time. I am fascinated by the images formed by punctuation marks—like a kind of code—and by the feeling evoked in the act of interpreting them, a sensation that resonates throughout the body.”

“My asemic works have been exhibited at the Kulttuurikonepaja in Kuopio and Gallery Aarni in Espoo in 2025, as well as at the Kotka Art Biennale at Gallery Uusikuva and Kadriorg Gallery in Tallinn in 2024.”

Special thanks to So_Helsinki and Ilkka Kärkkäinen for their support and collaboration in the printmaking workshop.

Moberg works across the fields of visual art and poetry, as well as in the intersections between them. In visual art, she works with scratchboard techniques, painting, and letterpress printing. Alongside the theme and aesthetics of melancholy, she is interested in asemic writing. In recent years, Moberg has created murals and street art works that combine asemic writing and painting.

Welcome to the opening on Thursday, June 18 from 5 to 7 PM!

An artist talk will take place on Sunday, July 5 from 3 to 4 PM

Kirsi-Marja Moberg, visual artist (MA), poet

sähköposti: artist.moberg@gmail.com

homepage: artistmoberg.com

asemicpoetry.com

Instagram: kirsimarjamoberg