Hippolyte Studio

One photograph repeats and echoes throughout the whole room – its every centimetre occupied. Sixtyfive square metres in total. The picture becomes embedded into the architecture, making the space an inseparable part of the artwork. The room has one light that moves.

as real as any room that moves, screams for the narrator is an installation based on documentary photography. The space is imbued with the real and imaginary, physical and psychical, emotional and surreal.

The work is at once photographic, cinematic and sculptural. It may be looked at as a three-dimensional image – as if it were the set of an imaginary movie – or two-dimensionally, as a constructed photograph. Moreover, the work becomes sculptural by virtue of the way it also sits as an installation.

The exhibition is a space that carries a mystery.

A riddle that is not solved.

Marja Saleva is a photographic artist who lives and works in Helsinki. She departs from documentary photography by building her images, which she digitally manipulates by adding various fictional elements. She moves between the real and unreal – playing with the photograph’s relation to reality. Saleva’s works are installations, books, and papers in which space is always an essential part of the whole. The themes arise from her personal daily life, but they often also contain a societal dimension. Saleva has published a 350-page photographic book and an online piece consisting of thousands of photographs. Her works have been exhibited in various exhibitions in Finland and abroad. In Helsinki, her latest exhibition consisting of an installation was shown at Galleria Huuto in February 2021. as real as any room that moves, screams for the narrator is Saleva’s fifth solo exhibition. Saleva graduated as a visual artist from the Turku Arts Academy in 2013, and she has a Master’s Degree in Social Sciences from the University of Turku in 2001. In addition, she has also worked as a journalist.

The artist’s work is supported by the Alfred Kordelin Foundation.