"See me as who I am" - Ten women artists' portrayals

Opening: 27.1.2024 14 - 18h

27.1. - 24.2.2024

Thu, Fri and Sat 14 - 18h and exceptionally Sun 28.1 14 - 18h and by appointment

Artists’ Talk moderated by Dr. Hanna Tervanotko: 24.2.2024 18 - 20h, by reservation

“The first condition for a woman’s progress is personal and spiritual freedom. Everything else is based on that.” Finnish writer and social activist, Minna Canth (1844-1897).

The gallery K41 hosts an exhibition that features women artists portraying women. Men have historically explained women and their lives, and male-centered lens (“the male gaze”) continues dominating society’s views on women. The male-centeredness is still noticeable, for instance, in scrutinized interest in women’s physical appearance, unrealistic expectations of caregiving performance, especially in the roles of mother and spouse, and societies’ measures to control women’s sexuality. In contrast to these stereotypes, the exhibition at the K41 gallery draws attention to women’s experiences. 

 One may wonder why an exhibition by women artists is still a thing and needs particular attention. Yet, undoubtedly, women’s artistic perspectives of women are drastically different from the stereotypical narratives about the mother, the wife, and the seductress. Whereas these categories often explain a woman in relation to someone else, women artists’ portrayals of women cannot be narrowed down to simplifying archetypes. They are reflections of the diversity of women's experiences. 

A spectator of this exhibition can immediately notice how many artists only portray a part of a woman. In various images, a part of the woman’s body is missing, or the woman is portrayed in shadows. Therefore, the artists select what they want to share with the spectators carefully. This way of representing women differs from the traditional gaze, where the object, the woman, is fully exposed. 

 Further, the male gaze is often particularly keen on women’s aesthetic beauty. Woman is exposed to please someone. Meanwhile, the images of K41 do not seek anyone’s approval. Rather, they scream, see me as who I am. In Europe, where sexual and gender identities and rights that come together with those identities continue being debated, these cries for full recognition matter. 

Dr. Hanna Tervanotko

Artists: Åsa Hjortzberg Lie, Malin Strandvik, Malika Es-saïdi, Ulla Shemeikka, Maya Heiskanen, France Dubois, Ines Laukkanen, Hélène Picard, L. Puska, Krista Autio

Photo © France Dubois

PhotoBrussels Festival

Krista Autio "Victor & Moi"

Opening: 11.03 - 16 - 20h

11.03 - 01.04.2023

Thu, Fri and Sat 14.00 - 18.00

Tempting as it might be at first sight, it would be missing the point to relate Krista Autio’s work directly to abstract expressionism, hard-edge painting or Mark Rothko’s colour field works. There are at least two main reasons for that. One lies in history, the time that has passed since modernism, the changes of historical context and of discourse that have taken place since those days and today, the (post-historical? see below) moment in which Autio lives and creates her work. The other main reason why we should not reduce her work, merely on formal grounds, to a kind of nostalgic (or expectant) return to modernism is in her character and the resulting evolution of her oeuvre. A consistent next stage is what we see in this exhibition.

Having said that, I am still led to reference Rothko for one single idea: the importance of size. For the simple reason that what Autio does in terms of dimension is what Rothko called providing sufficient space for the viewer to experience, reflect, immerse (and, of course, implied in that, space for the artist for expression). Her large canvases with strong monochrome fields and strips of colour create that space – even when she makes small monochrome pieces, she arranges them in patterns that add up to one large unit.

By doing so, we shift to the spatial spectrum of time-space, liberating us from the temporality of associations and references. Meanwhile, “liberating us” of that kind of temporality does not mean eliminating temporal, historical references. The liberation comes in the form of opening up the space for dualities or seeming contradictions (historical and timeless; symbolic and concrete; emptying out and filling up; chronological and synchronous; personal and impersonal; archetypal and political; etc.) – to be true and relevant at the same time, one not cancelling or neutralizing the other but probably even reinforcing one another in her expression and our experience. All this is carried to a next level by the titles. When a free flow of fields of hues starting and finishing arbitrarily, in patterns whose rules are dictated by an inherent rhythm, are given names of persons, with a wink, Autio tricks us into the illusion of pseudo-concreteness spiced with a bit of humour too. (Yes, humour and seriousness, tragedy and comedy are also to be added to the list of dualities above.)

When I started to learn the piano, all we did in the first class with my teacher was hit key after key with me having to say what colour appeared before my closed eyes. In a way, Autio does the opposite: she gives us the colour, the pattern, the space, and we, together with her, share an experience. The extent of that sharing is up to as many personal and impersonal factors as we are disposed to at any given moment.

This is also what allows her to respond most naturally, concretely and authentically to the moment in history when, all of a sudden, she strikes us with a field of blue on top of one of yellow...

 Zsolt Kozma

L. Puska “Two Do Too”

Opening: 28.1.2023 16 - 20h

28.1. - 18.2.2023

Thu, Fri and Sat 14 - 18h or by appointment

The solo exhibition by Finnish artist Laura Puska is built around the artist’s book Two Do Too - 101 short stories(2020). The book collects together 101 ways to handle a dialogue and analyses a transformation of form and meaning. The book is compiled using methods of participation. In the exhibition, the book is opened up and extended through mediums of photography, moving image and performance. The audience is invited to listen to a reading performance taking place during the exhibition.

Laura Puska (b. 1986) is a Finnish visual artist with a performance based practice. She works with a variety of mediums from video to sculptures, from durational performances to participatory projects. She considers objects as potentially caring companions and performed gestures as a tool to direct attention. Through methods of exchange, accumulation and repetition, Puska is interested in routines, intimacy and how a human being navigates in a society. She has performed and exhibited, i.a. in Kanal - Centre Pompidou in Brussels, Corning Museum of Glass in New York, Looiersgracht 60 in Amsterdam, and CEAC - Chinese European Art Centre in Xiamen. Originally educated as a glass blower, Puska has studied fine arts and visual cultures in Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, Luca School of Arts in Ghent and Aalto University in Helsinki. Puska is currently living and working in Ghent.

This exhibition takes place as part of the PhotoBrussels Festival https://www.photobrusselsfestival.com

K41 Rue Keyenveld 41+ 1050 IXL | Thu - Sat 14 - 18 | +32 474 967576 | kristapautio@yahoo.fr | Facebook: K41

The Nordic Government: D-RAW-ING

Opening: 1.10.2022 - 16 - 20h

1.10 - 22.10.2022

Thu, Fri and Sat 14 - 18h or by appointment

The artists of The NordiK Government collective work with different media, from painting to sculpture, from video to performance. However, each of them considers drawing as one of their basic tools no matter as a figurative or abstract composition, as an act to mediate agency or as digitally generated format.

The exhibition of D-raw-ing consists of a display of each of the artists' individual practices pragmatically curated into a larger whole. This set up represents the collective : each individual practice is respected while creating a welcoming, dynamic space when coming together.

The NordiK Government is a collective of four Belgium and France-based Finnish female artists Krista Autio, Maija Heiskanen, Laura Puska and Ines Laukkanen. The collective was formed in 2020 during the global pandemic when there was an urge to connect with each other. The origin of the group stems from questioning the notion of the individual artist and a desire to delve into the possibilities of collective making. The NordiK Government's purpose is to explore the different forms of working together through practice-based research on an experimental platform.

The NordiK Government's first exhibition Dis-Dancing was held during WeArtXL in Vermeulen, Ixelles in September 2020, right before the second lockdown in Belgium. The second exhibition Af-ter-ing took place in Studio 68 in Antwerp from December 2021 to January 2022. Af-ter-ing as a title of the current show is a continuation of Dis-dancing. It is a word play : achronological description concluding what happened during the first year of The NordiK Government, from distance and dancing to after and making again. The dynamic meaning of the English suffix "-ing" is exploited as the collective strives for active collaboration; doing as a core principle. D-raw-ing continues the series of the collective’s shared practice.

This exhibition forms part of Brussels Drawing Week
https://www.drawingweek.brussels/fr/

Merzedes Sturm-Lie "In the Kingdom of Oil and Millions, Brussels-Baku"

Opening: 2.6 - 18 - 21h

2.6 - 18.6.2022

Thu, Fri and Sat 14 - 18h or by appointment

This project is an ongoing exploration of the thematics of Azerbaijans first feature film “In the Kingdom of Oil and Millions” (1916) and its web of geopolitical and transnational relations stretching between Azerbaijan, the former Soviet Union and its republics and Europe’s international cinema. “In the Kingdom of Oil and Millions” was produced by the Belgian Pironnet brothers with financial support from the oil magnates of Baku and showed both the everyday life of the Baku millionaires as well as that of the workers in the oilfields. The film disappeared in 1920 after the Bolshevik occupation of Azerbaijan.

During a residency at YARAT Contemporary Art Centre in 2016 I researched the 1916 film and produced a series of eight paintings incorporating my everyday impressions. A few months ago, I anew started researching the Pironnet brothers and the history of Belgian interests in Russia and the Caucasus. This all amidst the turbulent news headings of the ongoing war in Ukraine and its global economic and social impact.

The video that is shown in the exhibition compiles parts of research material and various interviews conducted with Azerbaijani and Belgian historians on the subject. The exhibition also includes the sculpture ‘Black Gold’ which consists of an oil barrel with 2,5 liters of crude oil at the bottom and its upper edge covered with gold leaf, creating a circle of gold. When viewers look into the oil barrel I imagine it will feel like looking into a dark well. Black Gold is inspired by the significant role of oil in modern economy and geopolitical control as well as by one of Friedrich Nietzsche's quotes. "And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee." ('Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future', 1886).

Merzedes Sturm-Lie received her M.F.A from the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm in 2015 and studied in the post-graduate programme ‘Philosophy in the Context of Art’, led by Dr Peter Osborne (Professor of Modern European Philosophy) in 2016. She was selected for the 2021 ArtContest exhibition at Vanderborght Building, Brussels.

Sturm-Lie’s work has been exhibited internationally at Komplot, Brussels (BE); Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich (CH); National Centre for Contemporary Art, Moscow (RU); Wroclaw Contemporary Museum, Wroclaw (PL); SESC Concolaçao, São Paulo (BR); Dunkers Kulturhus, Helsingborg (SE); Pori Art Museum, Pori (FL); IX International Biennial of Art 2016, La Paz (BO). She lives and works in Brussels, Belgium and Stockholm, Sweden. The exhibition continues K41's nordiKeye exhibition series, curated by Krista Autio.

K41 Rue Keyenveld 41+ 1050 IXL | Thu - Sat 14 - 18 | +32 474 967576 | kristapautio@yahoo.fr | Facebook: K41

Krista Autio & Malika Es-Saïdi "NoBODY is perfect"

Vernissage: 17.9. 15 - 20 

17.9.- 2.10.2021 

Thursday to Saturday: 14 - 18

Les panneaux publicitaires nous vendent une image de nous-mêmes idéalisée. Les artistes Krista Autio et Malika Es-saïdi  proposent deux interventions frontales sur des panneaux et deux visions de ce que ces corps de femmes offertes évoquent pour chacune d’elle. Matière, réflexion émotions.

Hélène Picard "My own private Grønland"

Opening 28.5.2021 16-20

29.5. - 20.6.2021

Thu, Fri and Sat 14-18 or by appointment

I wanted to go away, to leave the house. We couldn’t go out. I left all the same on a motionless trip. Without plane, boat or sleigh. Just a destination to explore, of which we knew nothing.

My own private Grønland is a resilient act of creating movement where there cannot be any, in the unbridled exploration of the images, knowledge and reveries associated with a country that we never saw.

Through the paintings, clothing and textiles gathered for the exhibition My own private Grønland draws a sensitive and intuitive cartography of a journey into interior territory. Viewers get immersed and are led to experience themselves the protection rituals to help move forward in the fog and, the lips chapped by the cold to feel the sleeping energy of life under the white and quiet surface. And the magic works. Gradually the imaginary becomes as tangible as immediate reality and the visible and the invisible become two sides of the same coin.

The artist Hélène Picard, born in France and graduated at the Beaux-Arts de Paris articulates her work around the connection between painting and clothing. She currently works and lives in Brussels. She has been awarded several prizes and residencies programmes and has had solo exhibitions of her works in Spain, France and the United States.

K41 Rue Keyenveld 41+ 1050 IXL | Thu - Sat 14 - 18 | +32 (0) 474 967576 | kristapautio@yahoo.fr | Facebook: K41

Ulla Shemeikka "SACRED SITES"

23.1. - 13.3. 2021

Thu, Fri and Sat 14.00-18.00 or by appointment

We often pay more attention to the differences between cultures and religions rather than to their similarities. Sacred sites are found everywhere in the world. It is a divine experience that attracts curious people and pilgrims to visit these sites. In the end, people share the same dreams, wishes and fears.

To make this exhibition, Ulla Shemeikka has visited and photographed several sacred sites. The photographs depicting prayer notes - written messages in the walls - have been taken in Turkey and Israel. In these photographs, the various features of different cultures become equal.

Shemeikka has also visited the places where it is believed that Saint Nicholas had lived. Saint Nicholas was a real person who lived during the third and fourth centuries. His legacy is partly factual, partly fictional. Following his footsteps, she illustrates the saint’s biography.

In her photographs, the landscape connects past and present. The details of these historical sites like columns and ornaments draw a line between the time of Saint Nicholas and imagination. In that process, history comes alive. The photographs that appear in it have been taken in the regions of Turkey, Palestine and Italy. These images are inspired by curiosity towards different cultures and religions.

Dr. Hanna Tervanotko

Photographer Ulla Shemeikka (born 1969 in Kuopio, Finland) lives and works in Helsinki. Shemeikka has held several solo exhibitions including in Belgium, Finland, Germany and Turkey. She has taken part in several group exhibitions in Finland and elsewhere in Europe. Shemeikka studied photography at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki (MA 2001) and painting at Kankaanpää Art School.

This exhibition takes place in the frame of HANGAR PhotoBrussels Festival https://www.hangar.art/pbf

Wailing Wall, Jerusalem, Israel 2019

K41 Rue Keyenveld 41+ 1050 IXL | Thu - Sat 14 - 18 | +32 (0) 474 967576 | kristapautio@yahoo.fr | Facebook: K41

Hallveig Ágústsdóttir: WITH/IN NATURE

Opening: 7/3/2020 16-19

7/3-28/3 Thu, Fri and Sat 14-18 or by appointment

Hallveig Ágústsdóttir is an Icelandic born artist, living and working in Ghent, Belgium, since 2000.  In Ghent she obtained a Master's degree in Fine Arts.  From there she followed the postgraduate course Transmedia in Brussels, and pursued her studies at the Brunel School of Arts in London, where she graduated with a PhD in Music Research in 2013.

The drawing medium has been Hallveig’s main source of expression for a long time now - and very often it is in combination with sound, music and performances.  In this exhibition the drawings will, however, stand alone, with emphasis on the visual experience of the visitor.

The works that Hallveig has chosen to show during the exhibition WITH/IN NATURE have been developing in the past couple of years, inspired by her love for her family, for the pure act of drawing and the Icelandic landscape, in which she grew up.

K41 Rue Keyenveld 41+ 1050 Ixelles | Thu - Sat 14 - 18 | +32 (0) 474 967576 | kristapautio@yahoo.fr | Facebook: K41

Tuomas Vimma: talk and interview by Pete Pakarinen

13/12/2019, 19.00-21.00

Tuomas Vimma (born in 1979) is a Finnish novelist currently living in Brussels. He has published eight novels and two nonfiction books since his debut “Helsinki 12” in 2004. His themes vary from advertising and publishing worlds, Michelin-starred restaurants, and crime in construction business. Vimma’s latest novel “Vasen Ranta” (“The Left Bank”) is a thriller based in Paris, where an innocent Finnish woman gets tangled in a high level terrorist investigation. “Vasen Ranta’s” sequel “Koodinimi Taïga” (“Code name: Taïga”) will be published in February 2020.

K41 Rue Keyenveld 41+ 1050 Ixelles | Thu - Sat 14 - 18 | +32 (0) 474 967576 | kristapautio@yahoo.fr | Facebook: K41

Sini Länsivuori "You are Movement"

30/11/2019, 15.00-18.00

Come discover your inner dancer in Dance Artist Sini Länsivuori’s Workshop at K41 nordiKeye project space.
Two hour session first opens up essentiel points of her long career in Artist talk and Q&A. By continuing with movement practice of her Salon de Danse method, she will create holistic and full experience.
Sini will guide you through the class using easily accessible exercices and images and everybody will be able to dance freely from their own bases. Previous experience is not needed. Warmly welcome!

Sini Länsivuori is a Finnish danser who has a long career in classical and contemporary dance. She is also a dance pedagog and has been teaching dance 15 years.
Sini has started developing her Salon de Danse method in Paris 2013 and is giving classes at moment in Brussels and in Paris.

K41 Rue Keyenveld 41+ 1050 Ixelles | Thu - Sat 14 - 18 | +32 (0) 474 967576 | kristapautio@yahoo.fr | Facebook: K41

Meri Ekola: “Highlights”

05/12 - 21/12/2019

Opening: 5/12/2019 18-21

Thu, Fri and Sat 14-18

Meri Ekola is a Finnish artist currently living in Brussels. She’s curious to explore the sensory qualities of experience in her artistic work. During her residency in K41 project space she has been in research to capture the materiality of light through a site sensitive approach. Light is always an integral part of her work, this time she uses it as an activating component of a two dimensional image and reflects this role. Her new work Highlights takes over K41 project space ground floor in the dark weeks of December. She lights it up with the reminiscent rays of early autumn sun. A double exposure of time and material is present to question the notion of a still life. An inspirational frame for her exhibition is the direct translation of a photograph in Finnish, valokuva, a light picture.

Meri Ekola uses light as her main medium of expression. She is working in the installation context as well as in the wide field of performing arts. She holds a M.A. degree in lighting design from the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki.

K41 Rue Keyenveld 41+ 1050 Ixelles | Thu - Sat 14 - 18 | +32 (0) 474 967576 | kristapautio@yahoo.fr | Facebook: K41

France Dubois: "Norwegian Wood"

9/3 - 30/3/2019

Opening: 9/3/2019 16-19

Thu, Fri and Sat 13-17

France Dubois, the photographer takes us into a sphere of vulnerability in her Norwegian Wood series.  A body with gossamer skin stands out against a black backdrop, echoing the dark landscapes of an uncharted forest. The artist summons nature's mysterious powers as a remedy for the invisible ills of our lives.

The viewer crosses these Nordic landscapes like a lost traveller, branches snapping under his or her feet with pale lights, ghosts or good spirits dancing in the air. 

Is this body which seems to be struggling to ward off an unknown evil suffering from sadness, pain or melancholy? Little by little, the perception changes, seeing what the eyes would have been unable to distinguish a moment before. The glints of light amongst the shadows of the tree show a path towards another world. 

The body leaves this existence, to slip into another dimension, the door to which is at the very heart of these landscapes. A stag's antlers held in strong hands becomes a talisman for this initiating rite towards new self-knowledge.

France Dubois captures these moments where the barrier between the physical and spiritual world are removed, inviting the viewer to a mysterious and regenerating ceremony. She uses the vulnerability of our bodies to evoke the huge force for introspection and artistic creation.  

Marie Lagarde

Maija Heiskanen: "REVOLVER!"

Performance by Maija Heiskanen

14th, 15th and 16th of February at 7pm

REVOLVER! Not the right time Perfect timing It makes you feel There’s something Going on Beneath Ships coming in At the shore Travelling towards Regardless

Revolver! is a performance, a poetic riot, a turn over referring to Voltairine de Cleyre’s ideas on feminism, anarchism and liberty or Manon Garcia’s ideas on women consent to submission.

Revolver! is a weapon, a way for a woman, a mother and a performance artist to question, to revolve in a patriarchal society, Revolver! rotates in the opposite direction as Earth’s sister Venus.

Maija Heiskanen is a performance artist. She studied first theater at the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis and later on at the University of Paris 8 St Denis and became an actress playing in several contemporary theater and dance plays in France before she entered in Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’art, Villa Arson and received her Master’s Degree in Fine Arts in 2017. 

Her work is autobiographical and repeats episodes of her life as they are resurfacing today. An underlying fictive figure of her’s is “La Mariée”. Referring to a perfect feminine figure of a supposed to be a woman, she deconstructs it. She uses this matrimonial symbol sometimes even in a pathetic and sentimental way to activate an exorcisme, to get out of a vicious cercle, to liberate and to sculpte a cruel, naked and true version of a female artist today.

Ines Laukkanen: Beneath the Surface

17/11 - 15/12/2018

Opening 17/11/2018 17-20

Ines Laukkanen is a Finnish artist living and working in Antwerp. She graduated with a master’sdegree in fine arts from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp in 2017. The human figure is central in her work, as she examines the human condition with a psychological approach. Her work is a visual study of the layers of the human psyche. She aims to uncover what lies beneath the surface of human beings and everyday existence through painting. She is especially interested in the unconscious mind and works with themes such as the uncanny; a state of horror after repressed feelings surface and the intellectual uncertainty towards the opposition of the familiar to the unfamiliar. By using metaphors such as distortions in the image and dream-like scenes and atmosphere her aim is to create an eerie feeling of alienation, like the uncanny, which results to psychological tension between the work and the spectator. She works with oil paint on canvas, following classical ways of figurative painting that collide with abstract distortions of the image. Inspired by the language of film, especially those of Andrei Tarkovsky and David Lynch, she aims to create film-still like images where the spectator has a nearly voyeuristic view of the subject. With great sensitivity to the materiality of oil paint, she experiments with the paint as a metaphor for the themes in her work.

You might give

Concept and performance: Meri Pajunpää & Simon Verheylesonne

Performance combining dance and visual art where the audience follows closely the journey of two performers, who are constantly creating and reshaping an artificial landscape, only made out of fabric. They attempt to represent an idealized interpretation of nature.

“While taking the audience into our imaginary world we are shifting their perception on what is taking shape in front of them.

The confrontation with untouched nature is seen by us as the ultimate spiritual experience. We want to see what happens when we transfer that almost religious admiration towards nature into the artificial material that we are shaping on stage. Throughout the history, humans have had the need to make representations of nature, as if it was something apart from us. We are not separate from nature, we are nature. This contradiction gives the frame for our work, as we play between being the viewer, the storyteller and the subject of the situation.

In history the nature has also served as the source for stories and myths. Storytelling has opened the window for people to find mystery within the natural. Fabrics contain the qualities of concealing and revealing. They also carry a potential for mystery in them. We are fascinated by how through using these elements we can create small universes with limited space and material.

Our relation with the material we use is determined according to each desired situation. In some scenes the fabric is given a sacred value in order to perform ritual-like actions, in others it serves as a playful object in which the movement can leave traces. One of our questions is, how is a human body relating itself to the nature around itself, and what happens if this 'nature' is constantly shifting? How can we embody this transformation through movement? If nature is in constant transformation, then movement is the one unifying thing that is present in all organic forms. From the movement within a cell to the movement within a human body to the movement within an ecosystem to the movement within a galaxy.”

Performances on 10th and 11th of May, 7.00 pm at K41, rue Keyenveld, 41 1050 Brussels

BlackSpot

BlackSpot is a creative space (and time) growing from the minds and bodies of Boris Cossio (dance, choreography), Blanca Prieto (baroque violin), Rebecca Lefèvre (viola da gamba) and Eneko Urizar (poet). We started working together in early 2017; dancing and playing music, moving and being moved. We record ourselves, analyze, select the material and build upon in order to tell stories. Recently, we have finished our first piece and performed it in few places in Belgium and in Italy. The piece involves acting, dancing and playing live music on the stage. It sits at the crossroad of written and improvised work. We plan to invite other artists and collaborate with them in our incoming projects.

Performances on 17,  20, and 21. March, 7.00 pm at K41, rue Keyenveld, 41 1050 Brussels

Identity

11/11-16/12/2017

Opening 11/11/2017    17-21

Photo "Sauna folks" by Jussi Puikkonen

Krista Autio, Miklos Gaal, Niklas Hallman, Raija Heikkilä, Miikka Heinonen, Tanja Konstenius, Ines Laukkanen, Kaisu Lundelin, Mikko Paakkola, Anni Paunila, Jussi Puikkonen, Anssi Pulkkinen, Anna-Maija Rissanen, Heidi Romo, Paavo Räbinä, Arttu Sailo, Elina Salminen, Carita Savolainen, Ulla Shemeikka, Vilja Tamminen, Taira Tiger, Riikka Wesamaa

Identity, from Greek Identitas, is a very rich and fascinating concept. It suggests both uniqueness and sameness: the uniqueness of an individual having his or her own character, history or fingerprint that makes it remain the same in spite of its constant transformation throughout the trials of its life; and the sameness between a person and other individuals of a same group, community, country or region. While it has been addressed in many ways in literature and philosophy the crucial concept of identity still remains mysterious and attractive and has inspired many artists who are also confronted with identify questions or identity crisis. Who am I? "Me, me, me and me; through me, about me, for me, of me... I, I, I and I. I am. I am not"*. Do I live or miss my true self? Am I myself? What am I doing here? Such questions may lead to baffling and surprising art works. 

This exhibition has been a common achievement of several Finnish artists either already established or emerging talents who have accepted to play with the universal and multifaceted theme of this exhibition. The fact that they are all Finnish and live either in Finland or in other places in Europe adds as an additional spice i.e. the question of the "Finnishness" or not.

K41

* Kaisu Lundelin

Riikka Kuoppala: And that's all I remember

01/06-01/07/2017

Opening 01/06/2017   18-21

Riikka Kuoppala: And That's All I Remember

And That's All I Remember in K41 is the Finnish artist Riikka Kuoppala's first exhibition in Belgium. It consists of two video works, which both look at a specific time in the recent history of Finland seen from today's perspective, and archive photographs taken by her grandfather in Namibia in the 1950's.

"I believe that what we try to hide does not leave us, but will instead keep growing in our attic, under the bed and behind the closet, until it breaks out and takes up all the space. I dust out and bring to daylight two blurry realities from Finnish history, ones that the nation might not want to remember as it celebrates its 100th birthday this year.

The installation And That's All I remember in the ground floor looks for traces of Finnish missionaries in Owamboland, North Namibia. I traveled to Namibia in 2014 in the footprints of my grandparents who spent there four years doing missionary work. In the video, five Namibians tell about the sudden death of my grandmother Eila Plathan-Saarinen, a young missionary doctor, in the Nakayale village in 1954. Many questions remain unanswered as every person has their own way to remember things. What were Finns doing in Namibia anyway, baptizing Namibians with Finnish names?

In the fictional short film Singing for Lenin in the basement of K41 I look at the 1970's Finnish communist movement Taistolaisuus from the point of view of my own generation, those born in the early 1980's. The main characters of the film spend time in an old house going through archives and trying to find hidden entry points to the past. One of the most important questions of my film is whether we can ever understand the period that ended not long before we were born, but that still was so near that it inevitably has had an impact in our identities. The script is partly based on interviews made with former members of the Taistolaisuus movement. They draw a polyphonic image of the breaking of a utopia, wondering if the common goal ever existed in the first place."

Riikka Kuoppala received her M.F.A from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2010 and studied in the post-graduate programme of Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains in 2013-2015. Kuoppalaʼs work has been exhibited at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Le MAGASIN, Grenoble; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, LMCCʼs Arts Center, New York City; the Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen and her films have been screened in museums, galleries and film festivals such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Ludwig Museum, Budapest; Loop Video Art Festival, Barcelona; Oberhausen Short Film Festival and Tampere Film Festival. This year Kuoppala participates in the Gothenburg Biennial. She lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. And That's All I Remember is Riikka Kuoppala's first solo exhibition in Belgium. The exhibition continues K41's nordiKeye exhibition series, curated by Krista Autio. 

Some that is the case

18/04-27/05/2017

Some that is the case

A thematic exhibition of video works and installations

This exhibition is part of the Reports from badlands project, curated by Zsolt Kozma

The Reports from badlands project endeavours to present a series of thematic exhibitions, where artistic positions and practices across geographical, social and sometimes historical divides offer perspectives of and insights into globally relevant subjects.

The first exhibition, Some that is the case, showcases videos and video installations by three internationally highly acclaimed artists, 

- video maker and Nam June Paik award nominee Eike Berg (Hungary-Germany), 

- legendary video artist, 2009 Venice Biennale participant Péter Forgács (Hungary),

- documenta X and 1993 Venice Biennale participant Philip Pocock (Canada-Germany). 

Personal visual diaries, Pocock’s digital travelogue presented at the 1993 Venice Biennale, and Forács’s philosophical journey across time via vintage home videos explore the themes of migration, personal history and individual memory versus community history.

More about the artists

eike.qxd8.com

www.forgacspeter.hu

www.philippocock.net