House Full of Art

House Full of Art ~ exhibition at Oulu Art Association

28.2.-24.3.     Hallituskatu 5, Oulu.

This years House Full of Art -exhibition includes two of my recent digital collages, Traveller 2022 and Houtushen 2024.

Theres little over a year between finishing these two pieces.

This time I got them printed on aluminium.

HOW DO THESE DIGITAL COLLAGES COME ABOUT?

First I draw the graphite drawing. Then I scan it and start working on it in Photoshop. Adding color and images. Then print with high quality pigments.

In my first digital collages I only used free images from internet.

But I started to think how I would prefer using my own photographs. So the process would be all my own work.

And last summer I started to photograph flowers and plants, to build a photo bank for myself. The trips to botanical gardens was my favourite pass time activity.

I knew I wanted pictures of waterlily for Houtushen, and then I just filmed everything else without thinking.

Boy, I didn't expect I would enjoy it so much. Even if first patches were partly useless since I of course learned the proper camera settings AFTER.

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Traveller

The title Traveller came after the digital collage was finished. It derives from the little egyptian figure on the left bottom corner, Khonsu.

Khonsu is the lunar god of ancient Egypt, and his name comes from a word that means ‘to cross’ or ‘to travel’. Like moon crosses/travels the sky.

At first, when I was drawing, I thought the image was the Moon Goddess holding the moon. Then I started thinking whether it was the goddess of Earth that is holding her own satellite, the Moon. And that felt more accurate.

The little figure on the boat is sailing on Earths hair~ocean. I figured the name ‘Traveller’ meant both the Moon and the figure.

Perfect.

Houtushen

I drew Houtushen twice. In the first drawing the dark spaces in her hair were whales.

They would have made it more a pair with Traveller, but the second drawing process faded the whales and also the boatfigure got lost. I really wanted them in Houtushen too but it wasnt meant to be.

And then I scanned it and started the digital collage.

I knew I wanted to include the waterlilies (as lotuses), but otherwice the flowers, other themes and ideas arranged themselves.

Houtushen is Mother Earth. Earth Goddess.

You can read some of the names she gets called, on the right side of the image: Bhumi, Mahadevi, Gaia, Dimu, Houtushen. I don't know much about the name Houtushen but it sounded coolest in all the names I found. It's from Chinese mythology.

Always good to myth a little. Add a little mystery.

I started Houtushen in the summer/fall? and when it was almost finished I stopped.

I went into hibernation and stopped functioning. Winter is such a dick. Thyroid demon is especially nasty in the extreme conditions, be it too warm or too cold.

Also.

GENOCIDE

I spent last 4 months watching people get annihilated. The most unjust things I have witnessed in my lifetime. Hours and hours a day watching livestream of ethnic cleansing, of real alive people. I don't know why but it was mine to do.

My role is to be the awkward middle aged protestor. Witness. How never again is Again again.

My worldview changed. Again.

I was uninspired to do anything. Why make art to a world that is this abhorrent and horrible.

I'm still in disbelief. I can't believe its happening.

Anyway few weeks back I got the message the exhibition is starting soon and I wanted to have someting new to show. So I finished Houtushen.

I really love making digital collages. It's such a delicious process. Felt good to finish it.

I finished it with words that would always remind me that I finished it during a genocide. That I wasn't looking away even if I was doing stuff I enjoyed.

Even if my art isn't political. It's a statement.

POLITICS

Some people have politics allergies.

Why say inconvenient opinions outloud and inevitably alienate some people who disagree.

Why disturb the candy cotton.

Of what?

What exactly.

What is reality. A genocide? What the ruling class now decided is normal?

Why are people setting themselves on fire to draw attention to it?

What are the governments doing exactly? And what are they saying they’re doing. Two different things.

Past few years we in Finland got into the game of subliminal and at the same time not so subtle at all add campaign, to start loving war. Start supporting war. Right after we got past the previous crowd campaign of US politics taking over reason in Europe.

And now I find myself NOT in a country that was famous for being neutral peace negotiator. Like I thought, and was tiny bit proud of.

But in a country drumming for nuclear weapons and foreign military bases. In cahoots with the original warcriminal, and loving it. The aforementioned abscess of the world.

I find myself in a country supporting the ethnic cleanser. The genocider. Buying weapons from them, which they try on palestinians first.

People like me. NOT loving war. Nor warmachine. Are now called traitors and whatnot.

Well.

F U C K    R I G H T   O F F   

There is no way in hell

Not enough propaganda in the world that I will board that embarrasing, inhumane cruise on the warmachine.

That calls genocide and ethnic cleansing self-defence among other things.

I will never do it ever.

Everything about it is wrong. All war is wrong. All of it. It’s an industry.

S O L I D A R I T Y

I'm still in the process of knowing what it means. But I F E E L it.

It’s love.

If anyone is bothered about mixing politics with everything. Finds it a nuisance. I don't. I find it interesting. I admire artists that make political art.

Google word 'politics', in english you get results of governing and power and games and crap.

But I have learned to know politics means: 'Taking care of common/shared matters'.

What affects others affects me. I will not live in a country that supports genocide without without voicing my opposition.

Spiritually minded people believe that we are not separate from eachother. Or from the whole. What happens to the whole affects me.

And I can't shut up about the injustice.

I can't pretend it doesn't interest me. Why should I.

PROTEST

As the genocide started I waited it to end. Waited. Was puzzled. Why isn't it ending.

What can I do. Not much besides be appalled 247.

So I started my online protest on Instagram. Organically. It’s the platform I use the most. It felt good to do something. Anything. Sharing whatever comes my way about the issue. Stuff that I find informative. And shocking. The reality of lives of palestinians. Under decades long occupation and oppression and horror of what the unhealed victims of another genocide are capable of doing. It’s beyond anything I could have imagined.

Also. I got to know palestinians through their social media.

First my interest was about the injustice. Then I started to CARE about the people of Gaza, of Palestine. What happens to them. And why. And what can I do about it.

Even if its just one person starts to see them too, through my protest it’s worth it.

I now have more posts related to Palestine than I have to my art.

I can’t have nonchalant internet presence. It simply isn’t interesting to me. It has to have some Complainamys Bosch too. Be an account of a real human. With thoughts and opinions and silly little things. What I care about.

Sure the protest meant losing many followers. Theres little interest to this matter. Or the way I post about it. You know. Pretty angry sometimes :D pushing videos.

I am my art with all of my opinions and thoughts so probably didn't really lose anything of importance anyway. This is more important to me. It’s meaningful to me.

It’s called being morally outraged. Apparently.

THERE HAS TO BE A WAY TO MAKE THE GENOCIDE STOP. Right?

I feel like it's about time people start paying attention to what is going on.

It's not right. It's not even humane.

And we have to live in this world together.