Pinja Valja
The Bystander
Galleria Huuto Uudenmaankatu
26.3.-13.4.2014
The Bystander is a documentary short film about a man and the sea.
The man in the film, Topi Kovanen, is a retiree living on the island of Utö where the landscape is dominated by the sea, rocks and the lighthouse rising in the middle of the island. The sea and its phenomena are present both physically and as a constant topic of conversation.
Topi moved to the island in the 1950s to work at the fort. As the years went by, he learned to speak Swedish in addition to his native language, Finnish, because the island is bilingual. However, he lost his Swedish skills as a result of a stroke.
Through Topi’s story, the film deals with the relationships between a human and nature and between language and the environment. Language makes certain aspects of reality visible, while hiding others. Thus it controls and limits the ways we experience our environment. What is left when language disappears?
Pinja Valja (b. 1984) is a Helsinki-based visual artist working mainly with video. She has graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Tampere Polytechnic and with a Bachelor of Photography from Aalto University. At the moment she is finishing her MA studies of Photography in Aalto.
The film and the exhibition have been supported by The Promotion Centre for Audivisual Culture and Arts Promotion Centre Finland.
Contact:
www.pinjavalja.com
pinja(at)pinjavalja.com
+358 45 677 3609
