Pictures

On February the 6th, on the Sami National Day we present an exhibition by two sami artists; Fred Ivar Klemetsen and Kristin Tårnesvik in Galleria Huuto Viiskulma.

Fred Ivar Klemetsen (Bergen,Norway) has in his projects aimed to document people on every continent and he wants to capture similarities and differences between native groups all over the world. This exhibition is named AINU and is about the ainu-people in Japan, whom Klemetsen documented during three visits in 2006. The aim is to present a most authentic and respectful documentary and seen  in a wide perspective, to deal with conditions considering the life and situation of minorities.

Fred Ivar Klemetsen is an award-winning photographer at the Norwegian newspaper Bergens Tidende. He has won a number of prizes at the Photography of the Year Awards. He has had several solo-exhibitions in USA and Norway.

Kristin Tårnesvik (Bergen, Norway) is using, photography, video and text in her works.

“Nationality and cultural identity are no longer constant values, rather something that changes and is in movement all the time. This builds, sustains and changes our identity and shows us who we are and where we belong. Through my projects I want to stress a new angle that questions conceptions considering national belonging and cultural identity. Through my works I want to create a new understanding for these concepts.

Tårnesvik is presenting a work called Suomi talking in Galleria Huuto, that is inspired by myths, clichés, stereotypes and prejudices and of how these affect the presentation and observation of people and nations. Kristin Tårnesvik's art is both obvious and ambiguous. Direct and diffuse, playful and serious, honest and provoking, quotations and images from well-known historical events, from pop culture or from daily life are sampled and create new photo-visual meanings. She researches and questions the North and Saamiland from the point of view of ethnic, geographic and national belonging. What are the elements of  >>>>identity-building? The images present a very intense story about how various structures meet culture and a human being in a landscape.

The exhibition is a Huuto production and is made in co-operation with the SDG (Sami Artists Center) in Karasjok, Norway and as a change 11 Huuto artists will exhibit in  SDG with the exhibition HUUTOurism in February and in September 2008.

Pictures

The works on display are three-dimensional ones, the starting points of which have been methods of social control and marginalizing, such as control of space and the body. In the finished entity, control and ways of objecting to it are mingled with and included in each other. My works are built of material I find – of that I create, with my own logic, new kinds of spaces.

In today’s society, the over-emphasizing of commercialism keeps vandalizing private and public spaces. The communal spaces and premises, meant for everybody, are disappearing – they’re only seen as something that needs to be made productive.

Architecture, zoning, and increasing control are means of rooting out everything creative and collective. Increasing control aims only at securing capital and private ownership. Almost every section of the society takes part in controlling and marginalizing: Schools, social services, the police and the media.

Spending time in a non-productive manner in public premises is undesirable. The non-productive and the poor are being left out, without any social rights. Spontaneous activities are often regarded as crime or living as a parasite.

I like to thank Arts Council Finland and Svenska Kulturfonden for support