Aino Aksenja: STRANGER
Tuuli Teelahti: HOW TO HEAL A BROKEN HEART BY GETTING ON A NIGHT TRAIN
8—29 November 2024
Everyday 1—6 pm, Tuesdays closed
Opening on Thursday 7 November at 6—8 pm, finissage 29 November 6—8 pm, welcome!
We have travelled on trains on two different continents, been alternately asleep and awake, crossed borders of days and time zones. We have looked outside. Stations, cities, mountains, seas, strange trains and the strangers aboard them have flowed through us. The trains and the tracks running beneath them have changed. We continue racing in time and landscape.
Aino Aksenja: STRANGER
It's burning in Michigan, smoke drifts across the Atlantic, the empty streets of Detroit carry my bike, as if being in a stream. Northbound on St. Aubin Street is upstream, the journey feels sticky. I’m startled by a loose dog running toward me, barking, growling, looking like a coyote in the hazy golden light of the afternoon. I'd like to photograph everything but it feels intrusive, so often I just ride on by. I find a strange building at the end of the street, later it turns out to be a drive-in bank. I pedal to 8 Mile and then turn back, accelerate, riding on a wide road alongside cars. The feeling of movement is suddenly such that the world takes turns in being born and disappearing around me. The whole city bursts into flames, a bird rises from the ashes, its body that of a charred car. The clatter of the car factories never disappeared, the assembly lines keep rolling, ever onward and onward, like the tires of my low bike, I’m one of the kids in Stranger Things.
Sitting in the soft darkness wrapped in mist & snow like a blanket, waiting for a freight train to pass. All in passing, all is passing, also these last nights before I see you again. A child in the next row is watching Home Alone in an elf hat and I’m a little jealous, it is the season. The season will greet you with home-made presents and silk scarves for mum, but I’m here on the road, solitary, not alone. The soft clacking of rails, the softer hoot of the horn. And now the moon is out! For a minute it shows itself lying down, glowing. Nevada moon, not quite Utah yet. These rails can take you anywhere in this dream you’re dreaming.
The exhibition has been supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland,The Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland and Konstsamfundet.
Tuuli Teelahti: HOW TO HEAL A BROKEN HEART BY GETTING ON A NIGHT TRAIN
The exhibition has been supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland and Finnish Cité Internationale des Arts Foundation – Cité Internationale des Arts.