BARAN CaGINLI

Baran Caginli (b.1990, Istanbul) is a Helsinki-based artist. The framework of his practice relates to issues such as systematic repression, extermination, disappearance, amnesia, ethnic discrimination, state power, forced migrations, and forced disappearances, but at the same time re-appearance, collective memory, and the state’s contradictions. Most of the people and objects he has included in his works are in the position of witnessing an incident. Although the witnesses belong to local problems and realities, they also refer to problems and witnesses in other geopolitical contexts.

Who Were They? is a photograph of the children of Sur, who lost their families and friends and were forced to move from their homes because of the curfew that was announced in Amed (Diyarbakir), Sur County, in December 2015. By obscuring the children's faces with fingerprints, Baran Caginli’s intervention meant to turn them into geographical subjects rather than a symbol of disidentification. Even though the text on the wall, ‘Yurtsever Devrimci Gençlik Hareketi’ (The Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement), was written by the youth of Caginli’s generation who chose to fight, the children chose to pose in front of the text, which became a symbol of their future. To have lived through the same losses as the children, as a Kurdish artist who was forced to migrate, the workWho Were They? is the untaken childhood photograph of Caginli’s generation; the current and future photograph of an endless war, pain and anger.

Kurkut is a work about Kemal Kurkut, a music student who was murdered by the police at the age of 23, at the entrance to the Newroz celebration in Amed (Diyarbakir). Immediately afterwards, all the television channels broadcast breaking news that the police had killed a suicide bomber trying to enter the celebration area. Journalist Abdurrahman Gök photographed the whole incident when Kurkut was shot. When the photos were given to the media, the police made an informal statement that Kurkut was not a suicide bomber, but a terrorist carrying the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) flag, and therefore he was shot. When the flag was not found, the police claimed that he had attacked them with a knife. In the end, the government silenced the media about Kurkut’s case, and the investigation into his case ended in a confidentiality order. Kurkut was body-searched by the police and his clothes were removed, with no proof of explosives on him and no proof of him attacking the police. The question still remains: why was Kemal Kurkut killed?
This book is the story of Kemal Kurkut; the story that some of us don’t want to forget and some of us don’t want to know. A photo taken a few seconds before he was killed was converted into a font, re-writing his forbidden story. A hundred editions of the book were put into public libraries through Baran Caginli’s guerrilla action. This intervention gives people the possibility to encounter the book in libraries by finding the name KURKUT on the back of the book, and to learn about Kurkut’s real story. It reminds people of the censored stories of children and youth murdered by the state.

JEANNETTE EHLERS

Jeannette Ehlers (b.1973, Holstebro) is a video, photo and performance artist based in Copenhagen. Experimental imagery characterises her multidisciplinary work, and for years she has created artworks that engage with resistance to colonialism. In these changeable terms, meaning and identity are explored, in both a sophisticated and an immediate way. Her performative and cinematic universes delve into ethnicity and identity, inspired by her own Danish and Caribbean background. Ehlers insists on the possibility of empowerment and healing in her art, honouring the legacies of resistance in the African diaspora. She merges the historical, the collective and the rebellious with the familial, the bodily and the poetic.

Black Bullets was recorded at the fortress on the mountaintop, the Citadelle Laferrière in Haiti, which was built after the revolution as a defensive measure for the new state, by King Henry Christophe, who was one of the key leaders during the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804). To this day, the citadel stands as a symbol of emancipation and of liberty. A series of black figures move in a looping sequence across the silvery sky, to the pulse of a heavy, hypnotic drone-like sound. The subjects are united with their reflected images, merging with them, almost like bullets gradually being cast. The piece is a tribute to the act of revolt.

MI TIJO 

Mi Tjio (b.1984) is a Stockholm-based artist of Chinese heritage, born and raised in the south of Sweden. Symbols and humour are elements often used in her work to explore societal structures and personal life events. Her kitsch, fluent, and sometimes absurd imagery and style span sculpture, photographic collages and textile craft. Tjio’s early work began as sculptural and material research, which has developed into becoming a creative process starting from personal reflections as a way of journal writing.

The sculpture Untitled explores three-dimensional form through the simple material of unbleached woven cotton fabric. Tjio wanted to use a material whose inherent quality is flatness, and to use it to create as much form as possible. By conjoining two contradictory elements, form and flatness, she experimented with how far she could use cotton fabric to create form without adding additional material. Through her explorations, braiding became an integral part of connecting the fabric pieces together to achieve both stability and form. In the process of braiding the sculpture together, Tjio was reminded of the time when she learned how to braid her own hair. There are various cultural significances in the braids themselves and in the act of braiding.

UWA IDUOZEE

Uwa Iduozee (b.1987, Helsinki) is a Finnish-Nigerian photographer and documentary filmmaker. Iduozee aims to expand the ways in which we understand blackness by challenging the traditional framework of its visual representation and by telling the stories of people who, in many cases, are ignored. The central themes of his work revolve around questions of identity and belonging. In order to deconstruct stereotypes, it is vital to understand the importance of how narratives have shaped our understanding of reality, and how they can be re-envisioned to create a platform for the people whose lives have been affected by reductive methods of representation.
The discourse regarding black people in Finland is often limited in its scope and lacks understanding of how long black people have lived in this country and the ways in which we have helped mould it into the place it is today. The people photographed for this project arrived in Finland starting from the 1950s and represent our parents’ generation. This is a story about first generation Afro-Finns, the trailblazers; about who they were, who they have become, and the ways in which they have influenced their new home - a home that wasn’t always the paradise it was described as being. Thank you for your fearlessness, your dreams, and the sacrifices you made for those that came after you. For us.
They Walked on Water is a collaborative project between the photographer Uwa Iduozee and the writer Maryan Abdulkarim, and it was realised with support from the Kone Foundation and the Finnish Cultural Foundation. The pictures are part of a larger ongoing project.

curators

Nayab Ikram (b.1992, Mariehamn) and Ramina Habibollah (b.1992, Tehran) are a Finnish-Asian curatorial duo. In their curatorial practice, they aim to create a dialogue between the Finnish and the Nordic art sphere by working with artists of colour. Working through the method and perspective of the intersectional feminist, they are challenging the norms of the cultural politics in Finland to be more inclusive and representative.

Text: Nayab Ikram and Ramina Habibollah