9.–23.10.2022

Fri–Sun, 14–18
Opening: Saturday 8 October, at 17–20
Screening: Saturday 22 October, at 18.30

Pussycat Soup is an exhibition that features a fifteen minute autobiographical documentary bearing the same title, for which I have been following and documenting my mother’s daily activities for the last couple of years, and talking with her about her heritage as a person born into an Orthodox-Karelian family. Her family fled and dispersed to different parts of Finland from the area of Lake Ladoga (Ladoga Karelia), which was ceded to the Soviet Union between 1939–40.

This is the first in my series of video works that deal with Orthodox Karelian cultural backgrounds from the perspectives of members of the first, second, and third generations. Each work has a different style and function and focuses on one person. This first part touches on subjects such as documenting intergenerational trauma (suppression), endangered languages, emigration, mother-daughter relationships, feminism, love, awkwardness, and some sort of lost-in-translation-ness. 

The spoken language of the work is Finnish and Livvi-Karelian with English and Livvi-Karelian subtitles. I have been working with the translator Natalia Giloeva who is one of the few people to translate Finnish into Livvi-Karelian, the language previously spoken by my family. In a sense, the work is one baby step towards bringing this endangered language into contemporary culture. 

Special thanks to Kuupuu for the music and Kaino Wennerstrand for the last-minute sound design.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a screening night that presents works related to the themes of my work, including different dimensions and methods of working with autobiographical content:

Saturday 22 October, at 18.30
– Misukeitto – Pussycat Soup (2022, 15 min) by Henna Hyvärinen
– The Hole’s Journey (2020, 16 min) by Ghita Skali
– Videodiary 2-1-2006 to the present (2011, 85 min) by Naomi Uman