Since 2013, I have been creating performance videos. The performance always involves painting, either as animation or otherwise as part of the video. Often, it also includes a song sung by me.
DURME / NUKU / SLEEP
Durme (Nuku, Sleep) tells a story of love and care in the midst of persecution. Spanning from the Middle Ages to the present, the work connects histories of displacement and refuge.
In the video, I sing a Ladino-language lullaby inside an Ice Age cave that has sheltered people for thousands of years. The performance also includes a painting that slowly comes to life as an animation.
After the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain in 1492, Jewish communities carried Ladino—medieval Spanish—into exile, preserving it as a living language for more than 500 years.
EN MÅLARINNAS SJÄLPORTRÄTT / TAIDEMAALARIN OMAKUVA /
SELF-PORTRAIT OF A PAINTER
En målarinnas självporträtt, Taidemaalarin omakuva, Self-potrait of a painter in the video, the narrator is as if having a conversation with Helene Schjerfbeck. The narrative elements include drawing a shadow image referring to the myth of the birth of visual arts, the narrator’s own painting animation, painting over Schjerfbeck’s self-portrait, and a Meänkieli (Tornedalian Finnish) song called ”Kryyvimaa.” Meänkieli, based on Old Finnish, is a vanishing language in the Tornedalen region of Sweden, even though it has official minority language status.
Regarding Self-Portrait with Palette I seen in the video, Schjerfbeck has said that there is little red on the palette because there has been so little love in her life.
HIRVI / ELK
In the Hirvi (Elk) performance video, I clean an elk’s head that has been boiled in the forest and then take it to my studio as a model. I use the elk skull as a reference in a painting animation. In the performance, I establish a connection with the elk, which was a crucial subject in the rock paintings of the Stone Age throughout the Nordic regions.
SYDÄMENI LAULU / THE SONG OF MY HART
”Sydämeni laulu” (The Song of My Heart) deals with death and the perplexity of a person in the face of death. When confronted with death, a person enters a strange intermediate state where ordinary everyday life fades away, and shared experiences with the deceased fill the mind. I seek words and expression for this state. The inspiration for the work comes from the poem ”Sydämeni laulu” by Aleksis Kivi.
