Black Cat Kingdom by Sari Soininen

Walking through her local area one morning, Sari Soininen detoured
through an unknown alleyway. On turning the corner, a gang of five
black cats began running towards her. “I felt like I’d encountered a glitch
in the Matrix” she said, “I began visiting these cats daily for a period of
three months through the first lockdown of 2020. They gathered up into
the same alleyway every morning. I brought them food and played with
them.”

Using flash with colour gels, Soininen transforms the cats into colourful,
otherworldly creatures inhabiting a fever dream. Her photographic
process draws on philosophical wonderings about reality, and her
personal, mystical experiences; Soininen offers the viewer a vision of
alternative realities as she sees them. The Black Cat Kingdom was created
at the same time as her first major publication, Transcendent Country of
the Mind (The Eriskay Connection 2022), in which she reconjured a way
of seeing she experienced during an LSD-induced psychotic episode in
her early twenties.

The black cat is a rich folkloric and superstitious symbol across many
cultures, and in this project they are treated as such. To the Celts,
black cats were sacred; the ancient Egyptians worshipped the Goddess
Bastet, who was depicted as a black cat; and black cats are repeatedly
referenced in pop culture and cinema, such as The Matrix.
The format of the book is labyrinthine. A surreal and winding journey
through multiple sections and gatefolds, overlapping to create a
concertina-like structure. The book reveals itself in new ways upon each
viewing.

Black Cat Kingdom will be published to coincide with Soininen’s first
major solo exhibition at the Lahti Museum of Visual Arts Malva, Finland
in November 2023. A UK launch of the book will also take place at
Photobook Café, London 12th October.