Hiljaiseloa / Still (quiet) life

Hiljaiseloa / Still (Quiet) life- series refers to traditional still life pictures.

I took the first photos of the series in 2013 in the village of Panozero, Viena-Karelia, Russia. The pictures are encountered in the silence of a historic village, in soft horizontal light, situations that were born without planning in advance, recorded in moments when time seemed to slow down a bit. Later, the series continued with pictures from not only Panozero, but also from other places, for example Finland and Estonia, but the same silence and staying for a moment is at the center of the series.


The vast majority of the original pictures in the series were shot by 2015, and after 2018 no new original, representative pictures have been created, not in this series, nor to anything else. My art-making was then and still is in a powerful process that drove me to face the image in a new way. Reality has started to appear multi-temporal and multi-place, and it seems to demand an image that carries the same multiplicity and permeability with it.Among other things, this has forced my art-making to go through a change that has questioned the immovable absoluteness of the image, disintegrated the image and finally led to a way of working where I have accepted that, the reality, the work and the image are constantly breaking down and building up at the same time.


In the later versions of the series, I have reprocessed the original images, printed and projected them onto canvases that I have partially disassembled. With the form of the works, I aim to experience the layeredness of time and the uncertainty of reality.


The images in the works are made up of transparent layers, the surface of the image is not a surface, but the image floats between many different surfaces, or between the world behind and the surface. The form acts as a metaphor for the experience of disintegration and futurelessness caused by the uncertainty of time, but also for the effort to build and maintain the everyday, tenacious search for balance.

Still-images from the installation.
Projected on dismantled hessian and linen fabric

Photo on dismantled and layered canvas

36x38x3cm -  31x25cm -  35x18x4cm