The Long Way from Kajaani to Sudan

ARS 11 will also extend beyond Kiasma. The satellite exhibitions comment on the theme of the main exhibition in nine cities.

The starting point of the satellite exhibitions is contemporary Africa and its many interpretations in contemporary art. The themes will include the status of women in African culture, the environment and ecology, and the role of Africa in the global economy. One special point of focus is contemporary African
folk art, which will be presented extensively in several projects.

THE ROLE OF WOMEN

The role of African women as the pillars and pioneers of their community is a theme in several of the satellite exhibitions. The status of women in the cross-pressures of tradition and change is highlighted in many works, including the short films of the female director Fanta Regina Nacro from Burkina Faso, presented at the Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova museum in Turku. Nacro’s short films explore the life and circumstances of African women, in particular the challenges that women who advocate change face in their everyday life.

In all communities, even in such complex and layered societies as those found in South Africa, women are insecure and learn to question their appearance from very early on. The South African photographer Jodi Bieber opposes the beauty ideals created by the media in a satellite exhibition produced in collaboration with the Northern Photographic Centre and the Oulu Museum of Art. The portraits show South African women at home candidly without trying to mask or conceal their pimples, scars, cellulite or other ‘blemishes’.

The exhibition in Poikilo – Kouvola Art Museum focuses on East Africa, on the rapidly developing art scene in Nairobi. The show is a review of contemporary East African art, where the central themes include colonialism, the blending of nationalities, identities, as well as ecology and recycling.

The exhibition examines the life of ordinary Kenyans and the political situation through the media of painting and sculpture. The exhibition in Poikilo is accompanied by a Finnish-Kenyan collaboration, completed in 2010, where textile artists Mari Martikainen and Minna Impiö engaged some thirty women from the village of Karinde in a crocheting project to create a community artwork.

GLOBAL ECONOMY

Environmental issues and the significance and finiteness of natural resources are themes highlighted in several satellite exhibitions. In Water and Waste, the exhibition in the Åland Art Museum, the topic is our relationship to the environment and to water, and also to environmental problems. Water is not only a vital condition for all living organisms, but it also plays an essential role as a bond and a channel which both unites and encloses.

The life of Chinese immigrants in Africa in the 21st century is the topic of Chinafrica, a photographic series by the Italian-born Paolo Woods, on show at Gallery Kone in Hämeenlinna. Thirsting after oil, copper, uranium and wood, the government in Beijing sends out Chinese state enterprises and adventurous businessmen to Africa, which has become the 21st century dream land, the ‘Wild West’ of our time.

AFRICAN FOLK ART IN FOCUS

A great attention in the series of satellite exhibitions has been paid on the rich and diverse field of contemporary African folk art. The division between contemporary academic art and folk art is not as clear-cut as in the Western art world. The current status of African folk art is the theme in four exhibitions which are produced jointly by the Finnish Union for Rural Culture and Education and local museums.

Stars of Africa in the Hämeenlinna Art Museum seeks to expand the view of African art as ritual objects, masks and human figures, familiar from ethnographic museums, towards contemporary folk art which is characteristically a cultural hybrid.

From Hämeenlinna the exhibition will travel to the Oulu Art Museum in the autumn. Artists whose work has moved farthest from the local craft traditions are currently well known also in international outsider art circles. Works by these self-taught African artists are also on show in Here Africa, an exhibition in the K.H.Renlund Museum in Kokkola, from where it will travel to the Kajaani Art Museum in the autumn.

HOME ABROAD

Many Africans seek a better future for themselves and their families by moving to the North, either legally or illegally. The exhibition in the Northern Photographic Centre in Oulu will feature work by three artists. The Finnish journalist and writer Annu Kekäläinen lived in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya for three months, interviewing, observing and collecting material in the multicultural desert town for a documentary book.

Adolfo Vera is a Chilean photographer who moved to Finland in the 1970s. His portraits and installations also highlight Africans in search of a better future, whether in Africa, in European cities or in Finland. In his documentary, the young Finnish filmmaker Jan Ijäs follows the life of residents in the Tammela reception centre in Tampere, now closed. That “warehouse for useless people” was home to 130 asylum seekers, some of whom never once stepped outside the walls of the centre.

In terms of kilometres, the distance from Kajaani to Sudan or Somalia may seem long, but in the streets of Kajaani the distance dwindles and disappears. Artist Anne Siirtola worked with immigrants in Kajaani when she was making her video Nälkämaan laulu. The video was named after the official song of the province which acquired new stanzas and rhythms from the multicultural ensemble; the members of the group came from many places, including Sudan, Somalia, the Congo, Syria and Iraq.

THE HISTORY AND PRESENT OF SOUTH AFRICA

Documentary photography has a long history in South Africa, but the language of photography began to change in the early 1990s with the ending of apartheid. New, different topics emerged in photography when artists began looking at issues of identity, representation, history, gender, AIDS and HIV, as well as traditional values, through personal perspectives. The Living Archive exhibition in the VB Photographic Centre in Kuopio presents the history of South Africa through the work of two photographers.

Artists of the Ardmore studios explore South African society as well as issues such as its serious health problems in colourful hand-painted ceramics. The striking, yet also politically engaged, Ardmore ceramics will feature in the ARS 11 satellite exhibition in the Hallwyl Museum in central Stockholm.

Kati Kivinen