Maarit Suomi-Väänänen
Middletons – Photographs from California, Salty Snow – A film and woven patterns
Yard Studio
14.06.2008-07.09.2008

The works of the Finnish media artist Maarit Suomi-Väänänen (born 1966) share a common concern with child and childhood, abandonment and longing. The glittering seascape in the film Salty Snow creates a backdrop for a story about womanhood. The film together with the woven patterns tell a story of the longing for a child, need and pressure to create something new, to procreate. The web of hopes, disappointments and longing is fragile and vulnerable. In Middletons, hydrants by the side of the road are endowed with a soul. Where one is lost on its way to first day at school, another has already learned to make graffiti. The photos in the series have been taken in California in 2005 and they can be sent as e-postcards on the artist’s renewed webpage (www.maaritsuomi.fi). The series is being exhibited for the very first time.

The most central form of art for Maarit Suomi-Väänänen is film-making but she also photographs and makes installations – sometimes even immaterial ones with smoke and light. The fascinating and multi-interpretative works of Suomi-Väänänen have been exhibited around the world, from San Francisco to Hanti-Mans.

thanks: Finnish Cultural Foundation Satakunta Regional Fund, AVEK, YLE, Arts Council of Finland, Visek, Taik Pori Faculty, ITU, Medusa