6–29 June 2025
Photographic Gallery Hippolyte

Sara Manninen’s Detached from Time explores the tension between memories, dreams, and physical reality through photographic printmaking. The exhibition, shown at Hippolyte Studio, consists of hand-printed graphic works on paper and an artist’s book.

The works have been created using a photopolymer technique, which allows a photograph to be transferred onto a printing plate and then realised as a print. As the starting point for her works, Manninen has used both her own photographs and family album material captured by various individuals at different times, all set within the milieu of her ancestral home. The alternating time periods merge into scenes that hover on the boundary between the imaginary and the real.

In the exhibition, memories appear like phantoms, signalling phenomena that exist only within the mind but can feel very real. The word’s etymology traces back to the Ancient Greek phantasma, meaning an apparition, ghost, or image. A phantom is broadly described as an imaginary and indistinct presence that can be sensed but lacks objectively observable physical reality.

The worlds depicted in the works open views into the artist’s childhood and family life. They allude to real events, the full extent of which remains unseen; actual moments are unattainable yet imaginable. The exhibition presents memories as a blend of traces and imagination—stories to which individual identity is anchored. Printmaking and photography act as recorders of presence, bringing something long past into the present in an almost ghostly manner.

Sara Manninen (b. 1996, Kangasniemi) is a visual artist and printmaker based in Turku, working primarily with photographic-based printmaking techniques. She graduated as a  Master of Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts of Uniarts Helsinki in 2022. Her works repeatedly explore themes of temporality, shared and subjective memory, and liminal spaces. Manninen is fascinated by the tension between the imaginary and physical realities. Craftsmanship and experimental technical methods serve as central foundations in her practice.

 The artist’s work and exhibition have been supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike), the Paulo Foundation, and Turku Saskia.