GALLERY ASKI: MINNA SUONIEMI – ISÄÄSI (THY FATHER)

“How hefty is youth, and how light has age become!

Minna Suoniemi’s works in Isääsi rustle with their materiality. In the midst of an autumn thicket – a whole life – the camera finds upright, gnarled old trees, stones worn smooth by time, dried leaves, and branches bent by countless previous winters. Their forms are echoed in the father’s bones and the veins in his arms. At the same time, the smooth skin of the young man’s back is intact for light and shadow to outline boundaries. The young man remains unknown. We know: he has the future ahead of him.

Perhaps there is a hint of this in the vertical video, where the young back is cloud gray. The father is heavier, the burden of manhood. Life goes around in circles, the son becomes the size of his father, the father becomes the shadow of his son. Until only place remains.” –Helena Sederholm

Minna Suoniemi (b. 1972) is a Helsinki-based artist working with moving image and sound. Her practice draws from embodied experience, and she has worked on themes such as control, body, class and family. Suoniemi’s exhibition Isääsi (Thy Father) depicts aging as an inevitable loss of power and addresses the threat of violence, which is directed particularly at the corporeality of the male body. In the exhibition, time is presented as cyclical and multidirectional. The human body is bound to place and time, attached to others and to the earth, ultimately decaying part of the repetitive continuum.

In the exhibition, Suoniemi continues her work with transgenerationality and embodied knowledge. The title of the exhibition suggests a relation – to love, to hate, to be a part of (thy father). It could also refer to the commandment to honor one’s parents. At the same time, it is a palindrome, which allows the end and the beginning to be reversed in time.

Suoniemi’s work has been exhibited internationally and her work is represented in Finnish collections including EMMA, Kiasma and the Finnish State Art Collection. She has been invited for trustee positions i.e. The Finnish Arts Promotion Center and has worked as an artist, curator and pedagogue in various Institutions.

Thank you: Teuvo Suoniemi, Valto Ala-Maunus, Helena Sederholm, Laura Törnroos, Jonna Eloranta, Aalto ARTS, Petri Ala-Maunus

An artist talk will take place on Sunday, March 22, from 3 to 4 PM. Welcome!

Website: Minna Suoniemi

Instagram: minna_suoniemi