Henna Aho
The Nightingale and the Glass Tube
Galleria Huuto Jätkäsaari, Jätkä 2
5.8.-20.8.2017
Once a day an opening appeared in the wall and remained open for about an hour. Then I would step out and walk down the hill to the store. Afterwards I am not able to remember anything significant about going out and being there except the burning brightness of the sun and my uncertain steps back up the hill, back to the other side of the wall, to the cave… I now call it a cave. A damp and grey place dominated by endless corridors and fluorescent lights.
My speech did not come out normally, I sang my own melodies. I told stories that did not have a believable order in this reality. The stories were, however, loaded with meanings and emotions, although unnamed, because my ability to perceive even a sentence was not yet sufficiently developed. Now, afterwards, my speech is still not perfect, not even close, but I am able to say “bird”, “flower” and “glass tube”.
After a few months, or perhaps years, I noticed that I can breathe through the wall. This happened when I found a glass tube embedded in the wall with one end on my side and the other open to the outside of the wall. At first I didn’t know how to use it but little by little I started to blow into it and then also inhale, which led to breathing.
In the end I also found a nightingale whose singing was even sweeter than my own melodies. It tempted me to say sentences in which the words were in the right order. Now that I think about it, my dwelling… How should I put it… it wasn’t healthy, but my basic needs were satisfied. Singing and breathing.
The cave is still at the top of the hill. I look at it wistfully from below, from the store, but it is no longer my cave. I have planted flowers around it to make it look like a regular hill. I have a daily habit of taking worms and snails up to the hill in order for the nightingale to have something to eat.
…
The exhibition is about the war between life and death and about life when one seems dead but is still alive. When one’s joy of life and hope have been given/taken away and one’s body – flesh and bone – continues its existence in reality. With age, questions have become simpler/more complicated, but still the fundamental question behind everything remains unchanged – will I go to hell when I die.
The theme becomes concrete through metaphorical depictions of life in a hospital. The exhibition consists of large paintings released from stretcher bars. They have been removed from the structure dominated by right angles. If I can’t release my own life from tight control, I can at least release my work. Long live freely hanging canvases. The works have mainly been painted using acrylic paints but also include collage techniques and ink drawings.
Henna Aho (b. 1977, Turku) is a painter and an art pedagogue. She has had exhibitions at various locations, including the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art, Gallery Katariina, Mältinranta Art Center, Gallery Aarni and Gallery Kone. Her works are included in the state art collection as well as in the collection of the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art. She is a graduate of the Turku Arts Academy and University of Art and Design Helsinki.
Henna Aho
henna.aho(at)gmail.com
www.hennaaho.wordpress.com
