Johanna Väisänen
The life of a building
Galleria Huuto Jätkäsaari – Jätkä 1
18.2.-5.3.2017
In my work buildings symbolize a human. Houses are places that memories are attached to, also in the collective unconscious. In dreams a human is often a building. I deal with the symbolism of buildings in the dream world and memories.
The starting point for the exhibition is my family’s history. My mother’s family is from Russian Karelia and the memories of life there only reach me through the stories I hear as well as a couple of old photographs. Many of the memories are related to war and in my mind they have become mythical stories where people ride through a frosty night on a sleigh pulled by my grandfather’s unstoppable stallion along a large open field between Kurkijoki and Parikkala to escape the bombers or hide from the bombing of evacuation trains in a culvert at the Elisenvaara station. Not everybody survived, of course.
I am a second-generation evacuee. In a couple of decades, Europe and its nearby areas will be full of people like me, rootless in one way or another.
The location where the exhibition material was shot is a house where my family was sent during the war. Now beyond repair, the house is a historical building as it was the first one inhabited in the area.
Through my work I explore a theme that I interpret to be Freudian, according to which buildings in dreams represent the mind of the dreamer. I reflect on the life cycle of buildings and the amount of tacit knowledge lost with buildings as well as home and losing one’s home.
My work has been inspired by Tallinn-based Tüüne-Kristin Vaikla’s work “How long is the life of a building?” in which she examines, for example, the life cycle of Tallinn’s Linnahall.
The character in my work portrays, at the same time, all the women in my family, including myself.
Many of my works are linked to the problems of memory. They explore remembering and the dynamics between the past and present from different perspectives. In recent years I have mainly been working with videos and media installations. My works create inner questions and their own microclimates and are often tied to local themes.
The exhibition has been supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation / the the North Savo Regional Fund, and the Arts Promotion Centre of North Savo.
More information:
jkvaisanen(a)gmail.com
www.johannavaisanen.com
instagram: johannakvaisanen
