Martti Jämsä & Kari Yli-Annala: Paikka (Place/Site/Patch) 30.8.–22.9.2019 at MAA-tila

Paikka (Place/Site/Patch)

30.8-22.9.2019

MAA-tila, Pääskylänrinne 10, 00500 Helsinki

Opening hours: Wed-Fri 2-6pm, Sat-Sun 1pm-5pm

Opening on Thursday 29.8.2019 at 6-8pm

The exhibition deals with two distant areas. They are bind together by the special attendance given to them and the special 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 skin to mend or to heal. A lens-based photograph or a moving image of a place can bring out memories, as it would be saving them. If the place will go through dramatic change, the picture will remind us of it’s former state and which qualities woke up our special attendance. The picture can be a patch for a lost memory or trauma and show the lost or past 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 white snapshots 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 Kantokorpi has written: “The understanding of the lived and experienced brings the past and the present together. Time has both nostalgic and unscrupulous dimensions. Jämsä’s Polaroid photographs capture both sides.” The photographs show love for 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 (مخيّم العروب‎) refugee camp 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 reality the refugee camp is a whole city, where people are born, live and die. The slopes around it offer space to rest alone or spend time with friends. The surreal-like transformation of the space within the image emphasises the dimension of utopia in the site and ties it with the incompleteness of the current political situation, in which the ending of violent occupation is the most important wish and aim.

Thanks to

Hazem Al Sharif

Hazem’s theatre workshop in Al’Arrub‎

Helena Korpela

Haidi Motola

Jameel Hilmee

Johanna Ketola

Juha Huuskonen

Sally Abu Bakr

Arts Promotion Centre Finland

AVEK

More info on MAA-tila web page.