Savu E. Korteniemi: BLUE MAIDEN & MAID ANNI

6.2.-23.2.2020

gallery open
wed-fri 12-18
sat-sun 11-16

In the Toivo Kuula's song a wanderer meets a wood-elf called Blue Maiden and are not able to love a human being anymore; the wanderer spends their lifetime in loneliness, seeking the soul of their own. Actually, there is two types of wood-elves in Finnish folklore. The idea of the dangerously enchanting elves is based on the Celtic myths. Additionally, I have heard stories of elf maidens who are delusive by another way: they look like human being from ahead but their back is wooden. The deficient anatomy refers to the Finnic dualistic soul beliefs and the ghosts of the dead persons.

The installation Maid Anni based on Viena (Archangel) Karelian oral epic poem The Hanged Maid. When Elias Lönnrot wrote so called "Finnish National Epic" The Kalevala, he used the poem as material for the story of Aino, the one of the most famous Kalevalaic characters. Maid Anni meets also a seducer or suitor in the woods - but in contrast to the Lönnrot's version, they are not old man Väinämöinen but "Kalevatar" (actually, their gender seems to be quite ambivalent) who appeared from the earth. Did Anni meet herself, the shadow of her own or so called "doppelgänger" from the underworld?

Etymologically the Finnish word "itse", parallel to "self", derives from a Fenno-Ugric word meaning "the shadow-soul". Similarly, Finnish version of elves refers to the soul beliefs and the idea of the individual's personal guard or "genius". In the drawing The Mirror I put together the idea of the shadow-elf as some kind of mirror image and the structure of Édouard Manet's painting A bar at the Folies-Bergère.

The exhibition Blue Maiden & Maid Anni is the part of the serie The Last Ones which handles with the Finnic mythology and a connection between The Land of North and The Land of Death.

The exhibition is supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland.

Opening is on Wednesday 5.2. at 6-8 pm. Welcome!