Memories are Bruises of the Mind
A pillow mark, a bite or a bruise often shows on the body. The mental imprint of an event can be more permanent than the physical trace. The Tracking Traces… exhibition publication presents traces from the perspective of art.
The stories open up a picture of change in the society, a past world now lost in time. The stories the elderly people are telling from their personal experience form the starting point of Veli Granö’s installation Islands. The story and the people in it are very important and significant in the storyteller’s life.
“Winter was an interesting theme for me because many of my childhood memories are about winter. My mother’s and my father’s stories in the work have influenced the whole family, and I have heard these stories many times when I was a child”, tells Veli Granö in the book.
“I always start from the idea that there is a person with a story, a big one or a small one. I talk to people, and ideas and entire worlds are created in my mind. You must not use the stories against the storyteller, however. I hope that the storyteller will also get something out of the collaboration and that the stories will promote selfunderstanding. The stories are about the storyteller’s life, and they do not refer to anything else but the personal reality of the teller. The reality still exists”, he continues.
An elderly lady reminisces in Granö’s work about how she was required to help her mother and do hard physical work already as a young child. Her hands became numb from washing laundry in an icy lake in winter, something she could recall vividly even in her old age. In her story, the woman wondered if her present state of paralysis and the washing in the icecold water could be related. Can paralysis be a “trace”?
FEAR OF CLOWNS
Popular culture, advertisements and other images have left their trace on art. Contemporary art recycles images and their meanings. There interactive relationship between visual culture and contemporary art.
Jani Leinonen has taken advantage of the logic and practices of the free market economy in his art – brands, media and networks. Lately he has been developing the backgrounds and everyday lives of comical, “very funny” and thin characters. Elovena was the first. In New York he was absorbed in Cap’n Cruch and Kellogg’s Cornelius. Now he’s working on Ronald the Clown.
Leinonen’s work Koulrofobia is an installation “drawn” directly on the wall with an electric cord, in which a clown hangs at the end of the rope. In the attached text the clown tells a doctor about his loneliness, the difficulty of finding a meaning for his life. The doctor encourages his patient to go and see Ronald the Clown who is currently in town. That would certainly cheer him up. “But Doctor, I am Ronald the Clown,” answers the patient.
According to the author, Wikipedia knows a definition for coulrophobia, meaning an intense fear of clowns. It mainly occurs in children, but young people and adults may suffer from it, too. It is caused by a scary encounter with a masked figure in childhood. This fear also occurs in people in power. The clown can break taboos and take up hidden issues.
GOOGLE AND WIKIPEDIA
The origins of Riiko Sakkinen’s drawings and installations are in product catalogues and advertisements. Many of the figures in his works come from the shelves of the super market or from TV commercials. They receive new meanings from the texts the artist attaches to them. Observations on intercultural conflicts, market economy, nationalism, globalisation and current political questions have been dressed up in cartoon or advert -like costumes.
In the exhibition catalogue Sakkinen describes his own work : ”I read everything from politics to sport and from the economy pages to the prostitutes’ ads in the newspapers. While buying my groceries I examine every bag of sweets and box of cerials. When I have chosen a theme for a work or even an entire exhibition, my main tools are Wikipedia, Google and Urban Dictionary.”
On first sight Sakkinen’s works look like colourful and happy consumerism, a deeper reading reveals the darker side of the spectacle. Sakkinen knows how to crystallise his point and how to hit the sore spots without adopting a preaching attitude, all veiled up in lightness: ”Stop No More African Immigrants If They Are Not Top Football Players”, ”Eat More and Get More. More Choco. More $. More Freedom.” ”I Love Mexican Food But I Hate Mexicans”, ”Cold Cola War”.
Based on essays by Chief Curator Pirkko Siitari and Curator Eija Aarnio in the Tracking Traces… exhibition book, collated (borrowed, changed and stolen) by Piia Laita.
