15.1.—8.2.2026

My exhibition “The Garden of Light” focuses on the shared story of humans and plants over a period of about a hundred years. The works feature portraits of my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, photos of people and plants in their gardens, and historical scientific illustrations of the plant species that all three women have at one point cultivated.

Lilacs and some perennials have likely been passed down to the present day from my great-grandmother Tyyne’s (b. 1902) garden. When my grandmother Eeva (b. 1922) and my mother Marja-Liisa (b. 1946) left home, plants and related knowledge were actively exchanged between the childhood home and their new homes. This tradition has continued after my mother’s sister took over my grandmother’s garden.

In the works, humans are depicted both as shapers of nature and as nature. The exhibition reflects on questions of continuity and transience from the perspectives of memory, generational inheritance, and the cycles of nature. What kind of legacy do we pass on to other people and to the rest of nature? What remains of us and what disappears?

Most of the works in the exhibition have been created using either the anthotype process, in which photographs are made using only dye extracted from plants, paper and sunlight, in addition to the positives, or the chlorophyll process, in which an image is printed directly onto a plant leaf in sunlight.

The images are not only produced in sunlight, but they also fade when exposed to light. The works on display at Huuto include both the anthotype and chlorophyll prints that will change over the course of the exhibition, as well as more permanent reproductions of the newly created prints.

In addition to the historical images, the exhibition features videos and photographs I have taken of my mother and my mother’s and grandmother’s gardens over the past two years. During these years, my aging mother’s ability to move has deteriorated significantly, and she is no longer able to work in the garden. However, flowers still bring her great joy and I do my best to help bring her near them. During this project, I have also created a small garden of my own.

While writing the exhibition text, I came across Rebecca Solnit’s essay collection “Orwell’s Roses”. Solnit points out that George Orwell, known for his dystopian works, was an avid gardener, for whom growing plants was a way to create beauty in the midst of dark times and to leave something good and lasting in the world.

In 1936, Orwell planted rose bushes in his garden in Hertfordshire. When Solnit visited the site more than 80 years later, the roses were still blooming.