Drunken gods and a box of colours = Humalaiset jumalat ja laatikollinen värejä

Tuotetiedot

Teksti englanniksi ja suomeksi.

In her exhibition and book Drunken gods and a box of colours Heli Rekula has returned to the material she photographed in Mexico in autumn 1988. On her journey Rekula was caught in the middle of Hurricane Gilbert, in the eye of the storm on the Yucatán Peninsula. There was no escape, so the artist and her travelling companion were left to wait for the storm to die down. It lasted two days and left a powerful impression in the memory of the young photography student. Returning to the events of the journey via an exhibition now, 30 years later, is a way of investigating how looking at the world through the camera has changed, what was worth recording, and how an image was constructed. On the one hand, the passage of time has brought distance, while on the other, returning to these pictures has been a natural, meaningful thing to do. The storm is present in the works via satellite images. Of the photographs taken on the journey those that have ended up in the exhibition include images of rain forest, stray dogs and rock paving. The journey was to be an important experience, even though while it was happening, Rekula was not aware of what she could have done with the photographs. Now, decades later, going back to this material repositions the pictures in the artist’s production.

The pictures taken in Mexico tell us about subjective experiences, which Rekula now submits for public inspection in the form of artworks. The pictures taken on the trip acquire a new mode of existence through the artist’s choices, they become artworks, they face the public and endless reinterpretation.

The title of the exhibition, Drunken gods and a box of colours, comes from the Mexican folk tale The Story of Colors*, which tells how a black-and-white planet got colours. The gods discover colours and share them with the world. The exhibition shows original material shot on black-and-white film that has been given colour – and hence a new form – during the physical, material process of graphic printing.

Heli Rekula is one of Finland´s key photographers. She has been active in the contemporary art scene since the early 1990s and this long career has brought her international acclaim. In 2002, she received the Ars Fennica Award, and, in 2005, the Finnish State prize for photography. In 2012, Rekula was nominated for the Carnegie Art Award. She worked as Professor of Photography at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design in Norway during 2009–2015. Today she is Senior University Lecturer at the Master’s Programme in Photography at Aalto University. Her latest solo exhibition As the Crow Flies was seen at EMMA Espoo Museum of Modern Art in 2017.