She peoples a space with images of realms, moods, rooms, ghosts and stars

A man sets out to draw the world. As years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.

Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph and Other Stories

Group exhibition of Henna-Riikka Halonen, Johanna Lecklin and Milla-KariinaOja whose works actively reflect the nature of realities and the possibilities of their interpretation. These three Finnish artists have all gained international recognition and work mostly with the means of moving image and photography.

Henna-Riikka Halonen´s works explore how to create stories within stories and how to weave events into events. In this, different realities overlap and the viewers awaken to the meaningful openness of the narratives and of the series of events. In her practice Johanna Lecklin works with stories, which she re-tells turning the viewer’s attention towards effects caused by the different ways of telling and representing stories. How does the story change when it is told again? In Milla-Kariina Oja´s artwork the question of the private and public space intertwine. What is familiar and what is unknown and how do these spaces and situations merge with each other? 

Henna-Riikka Halonen is showing an installation, Eden, The Po(w)der of Fear. The installation consists of a short film, drawings and a poster, and is continuation for a performance Halonen constructed for Lilith Performance Studio in Malmö, Sweden during spring summer 2014. The live performance Eden, The Pow(d)er of Fear took place in a labyrinth-like construct, in which the young actors from Malmö repeated strange rituals and viewers were let in to wander freely. A throw of a dice governed the order of the scenes inside of the set, where a group of “students” were spending time, indulging in transgressive behavior of all sorts; games, plays, rituals and other activities. The starting point for the project was the French Nouveau Romain writer Alain Robbe Grillet’s film L'Eden et Apres from 1970.

Milla-Kariina Oja is showing a selection of her photography series Home-Project (2010) and a video work Falling House (2013). They both belong to the on-going research in Oja ?s recent years works on ones individual space, home and borders. Home-Project was realized in Finland and China, where Oja travelled with a self made house-shaped construction to different landscapes carefully setting up her house there and then photographing it. Falling House follows the destruction of a two-storey house in a town in South China.

Johanna Lecklin is showing two moving image works, The Cage (2015) and A Christmas Tale (2013). Lecklin is interested in experimenting with storytelling. Both of the works are inspired by recorded stories from her storytelling project Story Café. They are part of a series of works in different film genres that depict girls being mean. In The Cage the main character is later dealing with her memories. Lecklin has arranged her café and made recordings in ca 15 cities around Europe.

This exhibition is part of Días Nórdicos, multidisciplinary festival of Nordic culture in Madrid, and was kindly supported by Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Frame Visual Art Finland and Ibero-American Institute of Finland.

Henna-Riikka Halonen (b.1975) uses a wide range of historical and cultural references, including Avant-Garde theatre and science fiction literature and cinema – testing the tensions between performers, audience and acting and non-acting. She creates stories within stories, spaces within spaces, events within events, in which social possibilities are both rehearsed, performed and re-performed. In this, references and elements are brought together through a collage like process.

She has worked on and produced many collaborative large scale video projects and commissions in UK, Israel, Ireland, France and Finland and has shown her work widely in international exhibitions and festivals such as Research pavilion, Venice Biennale 2015, You Imagine What you Desire, Biennale of Sydney 2014, Eden The Pow(d)er of Fear, Lilith Performance Studio (Malmo, Sweden), Fictitious Entry, Uqbar (Berlin), Video Dumbo festival (New York), Gallery Factory (Seoul), Transmediale 2012 (Berlin), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Festival De Nouveau Cinema (Montreal), Brussels Short film Festival, Musrara Mix (Jerusalem), Collective Gallery (Edinburgh), Incheon International Biennale (Korea).

Halonen graduated with MFA Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, London in 2006 and is currently doing Doctoral studies at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts. She lives and works in Helsinki, Finland.

Johanna Lecklin (b. 1972) often uses storytelling as a point of departure for her work, and asks audiences to participate in interviews, storytelling events and secret confessions. Her interest lies especially in moving image on the border of documentary and fiction.

She has arranged solo exhibitions for example in Gallery Forum Box in Helsinki and in Haninge Art Hall in Sweden. Her works have been shown in the collection exhibition Contemporary Portrait. Face to Face (2015-2016) in the Contemporary Art museum Kiasma in Helsinki and in the City States exhibition in Liverpool Biennial 2010, and on several international art and film festivals such as Kasseler Dokumentarfilm- & Videofest in Germany, New Screen New-Castle, Newcastle, UK, and Tampere Film Festival, Tampere, Finland.

Lecklin has graduated with a master’s degree from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts 2003 and from Helsinki University 2008. She is doing her doctoral studies at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and at Helsinki University. She has studied at the Fine Art Media department at Slade School of Fine Arts, UCL in London 1998-99. She lives and works in Helsinki, Finland.

Milla-KariinaOja´s (b.1976) recent works investigate the characteristics of different individual spaces, attempting to ask what is similar between them, what connects the spaces, not architecturally or materially, but on an emotional level. In our memories the spaces we have lived in get the same meaning. They have all been shelters for us, spaces of protection and comfort. In our memories they become one.

Her work moves on the borders of photography and video, often including some performative qualities. Her work has been exhibited in galleries, art centres and museums in Europe and China. Her newest video installation Behind dark curtains snow seems to be whiter was part of the international Turku Biennial 2015 at the Contemporary Art Museum Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova (Turku, Finland). Home-Project featured now in Espacio Trapezio was exhibited previously as a solo show in Beijing at one of  Chinas most prominent platforms for contemporary photography and video art, The Three Shadows Photography Art Centre and was also part of the Special Projects -Foreign artists in China platform at the Art Beijing Contemporary art fair 2010. Other exhibitions include: Imagine Gallery (Beijing), Photography Gallery Hippolyte (Helsinki), Oulu Museum of Art (Oulu, Finland), Lahti Museum of Art (Lahti, Finland) Lianzhou International art photography festival, (Lianzhou, China), Galleria Ferran Cano (Barcelona).

Oja is currently based in Helsinki. She graduated with BA (Hons) Fine Art Photography from Manchester Metropolitan University 1999. She continued her studies in a Fine Art PhD program 2000-2002 at the University of Barcelona, Spain, where she lived and worked for 7 years until she moved to China in 2006.

Henna- Riikka Halonen, Milla-Kariina Oja and Johanna Lecklin. Espacio Trapézio. 05|09 - 12|10|2015