The fifth exhibition of Independence Through the Lenses -tour opens toning at M. Žilinskas Art Gallery in Kaunas, Lithuania. We are happy to present completely new works from three of the artist on the tour Sara Hornigs Half of Us, is her final work from this spring, Harri Pälviranta is presenting his ongoing series Military Dispatch and Juha Suonpääs video installation IBIDEM only had its world premiere at Backlight ´17 in Tampere few weeks ago. Juuso Westerlunds series Looking for Heroes and an edition of Riitta Päiväläinens Imaginary Meetings will also be seen on this tours exhibitions in Lithuania.
The Lithuanian part of Independence Through the Lenses –tour is supported by the Finnish Embassy in Vilnius.
Cultural traditions, the history told and the history left untold – tales and beliefs all shape our experiences of ourselves as individuals as well as a nation. They affect our ways of seeing and looking at ourselves and at others. National identity can meld us into familiar characterisations, but it can also give us momentary uniqueness. The uniqueness of Independence Through the Lenses –tour is more quotidiar than ceremony speeches. It shows the everyday heroism of coping, managing and letting go, carrying along the memories and the past as part of oneself. Harri Pävirantas recent series Military Dispatch (2017) and Juha Suonpääs video installation IBIDEM (2017), go through the Finnish wars in relation to today. Pälviranta in national and individual level and Suonpää in the city of Tampere, which was one of the main battle fields of the Finnish civil war in 1918. Same shoulders of the dead soldier carry both cloaks, the one of national glory and the one of grief from the near ones left behind. Sara Hornigs Half of Us –series reveals the life alongside depression. One in five Finns suffer from depression during their lifetime. Already half of the 5 millions population has a friend or a relative that suffers from depression. Loneliness creates a space with no entrance for the others.
Nokka-Matti is a legendary squirrel and Marten hunter. He got the last of his 9 children at the age of 79. The Finnish national epic, Kalevala, features the trials & tribulations of many mythological heroes. Westerlund is searching for these legendary characters from the people of the same Kainuu region in Finland where the Kalevala stories were originally collected. As in the mythological heroes there’s always something very heroic and tragical in the people Westerlund has photographed for this project. He believes these are the kind of people that the stories would have been told and collected in the time of writing of Kalevala.
Riitta Päiväläinen’s Imaginary Meetings, inklings serve as passages between memory and oblivion, between presence and absence. The scenery, and the space Päiväläinen has created into it, the vanishing traces and vestiges allow us to imagine what might have happened previously, or what as well might yet to come. Juuso Westerlund returns to Kainuu region where the stories for Finlands national epic Kalevala where collected. What would these famous Finnish characters and heroes from the epic, first published in 1835, be like to day? What kind of person would be todays shaman Väinämöinen or Seppo Ilmarinen, the classical hero? Even today the roots, and a sense of belonging create comfort and refuge, an emotional bond and an idea of a place you can always go back to.
