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Imaginary Portraits of Real People  

The works are based on documentary interviews of 8 individuals representing extremes in their relation
to body and mind. Although the original starting point of each work is private and personal, becomes the
message socially and politically universal speaking of the problematic nature of identity and bodily issues.

The heart of each interview text is embedded as visual elements into the complementary color photo
collages. Visible in the life seize works are either photographs of concrete objects from each
interviewee's life or subjectively interpreted (mental) images brought about by the interviews.




Exhibition documentation



Exhibition review: Digikollaaseissa pintaa ja sisusta – Helsingin Sanomat (in Finnish)


Exhibition review: Tilan ja ajan taide kukoistaa – Helsingin Sanomat (in Finnish)

                                                                                                                                                                                            Inquiries and information

Aids Patient, 2000. 99 x 210 cm -- 39" x 82 1/2"

Excerpt from The Aids Patient interview:

"That great love...  I’ve never been fully in love.
Never had that one relationship. Never felt that connection.

I wouldn't want to judge a person based on first impressions only because he or she seems strange or thinks 'the wrong way'. If we were all limbless worms, one gender, then equality would rule the world.

My body remembers places from my childhood: the pond we used to swim in, the cow pen and the ruins overran by weeds where we'd pick strawberries. My skin remembers the human touch, the school gym, water and wind. When I think about a person or a place my soul goes there, with my thoughts.

I am bio material. When nobody remembers me anymore then the very last part of me has disappeared for good.

This illness has increased my freedom, the more I know the less it confines me. – But I still have the same faults and neuroses as before."

I believe pain does good; that it has to be tolerated.
But when I have a headache I take a painkiller.

"In a way this illness is luxury, at least my life has not been a waste. Existence with purpose.

Getting old doesn’t scare me, because death is right here, present constantly as an old friend.

There's beauty in death and tragic things. I connect deeply with the painting of Saint Sebastian pierced by arrows.

Anybody can get hit by a car tomorrow and die. Yet we have that image of the future in our heads. It is part of us.

The rest of my life is like a railway on a map, it goes on and on. The end has not faded out."
                                        - - - - -
* WHO calls on the global community to equalize the
   HIV response (WHO.  December 1, 2022)
* Millions of lives at risk as progress against AIDS falters
   (UNAIDS. July 27, 2022)
* 40 vuotta hiviä ja 25 vuotta lääkkeitä: hiv-positiivisen 
   tilanne Suomessa turvallinen, mutta epäkohtiakin on
   (HUS. 30.11.2021) (In Finnish)
* Suomessa hiv-tartunnat todetaan usein vuosien viiveellä 
   – hivin ja muiden seksitautien testausta tulisi tehostaa
   (STT info/Hiv-säätiö 21.11.2022) (In Finnish)

Pregnant Woman, 2000. 200 x 106 cm -- 78 1/2" x 42"

---

Excerpt from The Pregnant Woman interview:

"I study photography and... oh yes, at the moment I am pregnant. And that's why I've had mental health problems.

I hope that I get my brains and my body back. Soon. Sometimes I just suddenly really want to kill myself.

Of course I want my child to have a father. My recent behavior most likely will have the complitely opposite reaction.

This body used to be mine, but now somebody else is living there.
I'm a puppet, strings are being pulled and different things happen.

Freedom is everything. One cannot take it for granted. This is what I have now come to realize.

What's most frustrating is that I have no say over my body and my mind. It just seems the situation is out of control.

I've always been skinny and it's been important to me. Now that I'm all of a sudden not skinny causes me enormous problems.

- What restricts me is pregnancy, nothing else.
My soul is somewhat lost. Or I am. Or one of us is. Or we both.

I've never in my life cried as much as now during this pregnancy. I never have to cry again after this, my personal quota has already been fulfilled.

It goes without saying that a woman has a right over her own body.
I have absolutely no sympathy for those pro life advocates and abortion antagonists.

Even after everything I've gone throught lately I still believe in myself. My mental and physical powers will be restored."
                                           - - - - -
*Postpartum Depression Facts  (National Institute of Mental Health)
*Postpartum depression  (Mayo Clinic)
*Raskausajan masennus vaatii hoitoa 
(Äidit irti synnytysmasennuksesta Äimä ry) (Finnish)
*Synnytyksen jälkeinen masennus  (THL) (Finnish)

Transgender, 2000. 222 x 150 cm -- 87" x 59"

Excerpt from The Transgender interview:

"I am a human being, Homo Sapiens, an odd one according to many. Because normal does not exist therefore there can be no abnormal either.

I don't want to be any kind of a monster, it can get very lonely.
In a way I probably am a monster to some people.

When I'm walking down the street I wonder how I look and what do those people really think of me. All my unwanted curves and shapes, my entire figure, can be concealed with clothes.

But these hidden flaps on my chest still limit my comings & goings and dressing up. Nudity is taboo to me. I can only be naked when I’m alone.

Now that I got my legal sex status changed, I have to wait again. On my ID it already states that I am a male.

My body is a rental. I certainly don't seem to own this. I cannot change my body the way I want. Let's take oophorectomy, the surgical removal of ovaries, as an example.

I am on the mercy of the bureaucrats. Staying like this could easily be called hell. There is lot to be repaired in me both inside and outside. I am a labyrinth, jagged with projections, alcoves.

What I've done in the past and what I do today come from two different persons.

People think I'm calm and sensible but it's only a shell. There may be hell of a struggle going on inside my head and the little people are whispering with each other under my shirt.

To me beauty can be something that is a horror to others.
My body would write an incredibly nasty book if it could."
                                                - - - - -
*Injustice at Every Turn, Huffington Post, May 25, 2011
*A report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey
*Transihmisten oikeudet, Amnesty Finland (Finnish)
*Translaki/Itsemääräämisoikeus sukupuoleen kuuluu kaikille (Finnish)