7 – 30 March 2025
Photographic Gallery Hippolyte

Henna Kokkonen’s video work It’s a Boy! is an intimate study of motherhood, expectations, and the concept of normality. It weaves together diary-like personal storytelling with the portrayal of an innocent child—a child who is the beginning of life but also a crisis in the parent’s life.

Based on Kokkonen’s own experiences as a parent to a severely disabled child, the video challenges the ideals associated with the birth of a child. A newborn is often seen as a sacred, idealised being, a symbol of hope and the continuity of the family. When a child is born with a severe disability, however, the ideal clashes with societal perceptions of disability as a tragedy, a threat, and a disruption that brings challenges both to the individual and to their surroundings. It’s a Boy! explores this contradiction.

Disability is not merely an individual’s medical or physical condition; it is a profoundly social and cultural issue. Attitudes towards disability are often complex and contradictory. When something fails to meet our expectations, it reveals our ideas of what is valuable, desirable, and normal. Kokkonen’s work examines how attitudes of the community are reflected in an individual’s life, how they are experienced and lived out in everyday existence.

The exhibition also includes a text by researcher Reetta Mietola that explores disability as a societal issue.

Henna Kokkonen (b. 1987, Lieksa) is a photographer from Kuopio whose work explores social themes such as care, power dynamics, and social systems. She is fascinated by the relationship between the private and the public and by the boundaries between science and art. Kokkonen holds a Master’s degree in psychology and is currently studying photography at the LAB University of Design. The exhibition at Hippolyte is her first solo exhibition.