2023 || Dear Souvenir | Cast bronze, patina| 344 cm x 405 cm x 60 cm|| Permanently installed in Kuninkaantammi, Helsinki. ||Image courtesy of the artist.
2023 || Dear Souvenir | Cast bronze, patina| 344 cm x 405 cm x 60 cm|| Permanently installed in Kuninkaantammi, Helsinki. ||Image courtesy of the artist.
Detail of the work |(Outdoor piece) ||Photography by Viljami Annanolli.
Detail of the work |(Outdoor piece) ||Photography by Viljami Annanolli.
Detail of the work |(Outdoor piece) ||Image courtesy of the artist.
Detail of the work |(Indoor piece, sculpture installation) ||Ceramic, glaze| 210 cm x 130 cm x 25 cm ||Photography by Viljami Annanolli.
Detail of the work |(Indoor piece, sculpture installation) ||Photography by Viljami Annanolli.
Dear Souvenir is a two-piece public artwork, commissioned by the City of Helsinki and the Helsinki Art Museum. It consists of a large-scale bronze sculpture of a partially dismantled hand-held fan placed on the façade of the school’s wall and of a sculpture installation of ceramic pieces taken from the bronze sculpture that have been placed on a wall inside the school.
Historically, fans have been mediums of storytelling. When a fan is dismantled, the original story is ruptured, which simultaneously opens up possibilities of rewriting and reinscribing new stories. Fans are ubiquitous as souvenirs, often replete with exoticizing connotations, which is emphasized in the imagery adorning the sculpture: Chinese opera masks, chinoiserie aesthetics, and Baroque floral bouquets. Simultaneously, however, the work’s title refers to memory as a kind of site-specific souvenir, emblazoned on the mind as well as onto a time, a place, henceforth always already passed.
Dear Souvenir is permanently installed at the Kuninkaantammi School and Daycare building Tammi, Kannelmäki Comprehensive School branch, in Helsinki.
For more information: Press release / HAM