Paikka

Martti Jämsä
& Kari Yli-Annala

30.8-22.9.2019


The exhibition deals with two distant areas. They are bind together by the special attendance given to them and thespecial qualities of the tools by which their images were framed and recorded.

The Finnish word “paikka” is a word with two meanings. It can be translated as “place”, a site which is lived,remembered and experienced. It can also mean “a patch” sewn to cover a tear in clothes or bind a wound on one’s skinto mend or to heal. A lens-based photograph or a moving image of a place can bring out memories, as it would besaving them. If the place will go through dramatic change, the picture will remind us of it’s former state and whichqualities woke up our special attendance. The picture can be a patch for a lost memory or trauma and show the lost orpast moments, and also remind us of the present and future possibilities of a site.

Martti Jämsä exhibits photographs of the places and objects in Helsinki which are often left unnoticed. Black and whitesnapshots and colourful Polaroid photographs bring out tenderly the aesthetic potential of the objects’ forms,materials, spaces and colours with the help of the chosen angles and the properties of the cameras. Otso Kantokorpihas written: “The understanding of the lived and experienced brings the past and the present together. Time has bothnostalgic and unscrupulous dimensions. Jämsä’s Polaroid photographs capture both sides.” The photographs show lovefor the moments and places, where the signs of the lived lives are present.

Kari Yli-Annala’s moving panorama images have been recorded at the slopes around Al’Arrub ( `مخ ّ بورعلا م ) refugeecamp in Palestine. Yli-Annala uses so called “landscape format”, which is a part of the workflow in making a VR movie.In it the seams of stitched parts of 360 degree image have the appearance of kind of folds in the landscape. In realitythe refugee camp is a whole city, where people are born, live and die. The slopes around it offer space to rest alone orspend time with friends. The surreal-like transformation of the space within the image emphasises the dimension ofutopia in the site and ties it with the incompleteness of the current political situation, in which the ending of violentoccupation is the most important wish and aim.

Kari Yli-Annala's thanks to:
Hazem Al Sharif
Hazem’s theatre workshop in Al’Arrub
Eero Tiainen (editing the 360-degree moving image)
Haidi Motola
Jameel Hilmee
Sally Abu Bakr
Reel One / Tapani Hakkarainen
Helena Korpela
Juha Huuskonen
Johanna Ketola

Arts Promotion Centre Finland and AVEK / Tuuli Penttinen-Lampisuo have supported the production of Kari Yli-Annala'sart work.