13.12.2024 — 12.1.2025

The Tuhkimontie 10  video installation describes the renovation of an apartment building from the 1950s in an eastern Helsinki suburb. The 10-channel video piece follows the views from the interior to the exterior in four apartments with the same staircase for two years. The change of seasons outside is compared to the progress of renovation in the interior. Views from the same room on different floors illustrate the relationship of the building to its surroundings. In the course of the repair work, some of the interior surfaces of the rooms are stripped of the clothing of the time of construction, the space has been present for many years.

Roihuvuori represents the first wave of suburban construction in Helsinki and is therefore a significant suburb in terms of the history of architecture and urban planning. Designed by Tarja Salmio-Toiviainen and Esko Toiviainen, Tuhkimontie 10, completed in 1955, is Roihuvuori’s “snake house” with nine staircases. I’ve lived opposite this house for a long time, so it’s also my own neighborhood.

In the photography project, I was fascinated by the matrix formed by the windows of the apartment building, the structured view of the environment. I had been looking at the building from the outside for years, now in these special circumstances the doors of the apartments opened and I was able to photograph my surroundings from other perspectives. In the timed shooting from a stationary camera position, the framing is speculative: I set the boundaries of the image and wait for something to happen.

Thanks:
Finnish Cultural
Foundation Center for the Promotion of the Arts Taike
University of the Arts Academy of Fine Arts
Renevo
Tuhkimontie 10 residents
Nanni Vapaavuori

Salla Myllylä  is a visual artist from Helsinki and a doctoral student at the University of the Arts. He works with location-based moving images. Myllylä graduated from Vapaa taidekoulu in 2009 and from the Academy of Fine Arts of the University of Art in 2014. His research deals with the relationship between place and demarcation.

Myllylä’s works have been shown in exhibitions, e.g. At Mänttä Art Weeks (2024), Gallery G (2021), Hietsu Pavilion (2021), Taidelaitos Haihatus (2017), Gallery Huudo (2015, 2013), Frankfurter Kunstverein (2014) and Kunsthal Charlottenborg (2017, 2012) and at film festivals such as Tampere Film Festival (2016) and Japan Media Arts Festival (2016).

www.sallamyllyla.com