Persons Projects

Artist Interview: Niina Vatanen

In this interview, Niina Vatanen reflects upon her artistic career, the challenges and various influences which had an impact on her conceptual approach. Starting with her own personal diaries to archival materials found in museums, Vatanen has repeatedly attempted to depict time and our perception of it as the core question in her work. Her tools for doing this may vary from found photographs, videos, texts and mathematics, but her focus has always been on decoding the intricate workings of time’s passage. She uses everything from a memory and its fading as a means to trace its passing, to a stick stuck in the sand to function as a sun dial. Vatanen metaphorically grapples with the Greek myth featuring the god Chronos, as the personification of time.

Filmed and edited by Daniel Court 2021
All photographic copyright: Niina Vatanen 2021

Filmed during the Örö Residency Programm

Artist Interview: Jorma Puranen

In this interview, Jorma Puranen talks about his photographic series "Imaginary Homecoming" and "Icy Prospects". His interest in using archival material combined with their layered stories, narratives and overlapping cultural meeting points has been the central theme of Puranen's work from the beginning of his career. He creates a matrix that translates itself into a visual field of fantasy that invites the viewer to a place of other nee and elsewhere.

Filmed and edited by Daniel Court 2021

All photographic copyright: Jorma Puranen 2021

Artist Interview: Hilla Kurki

In this interview, Hilla Kurki reflects upon her artistic work and the grief she embraces after the premature death of her sister. She transforms her sister's once borrowed black dresses into an emotional bridge to link us through to her memories in the hope for self-recovery. By cutting, sewing, and weaving, Kurki works through all her sister's collected garments to reshape her personal story and create a new narrative. This activity helps enable her to regain her authority in determining her own fate. She began referencing her family's legacy of rug-making, the cutting of clothes of the deceased to the weft.

Filmed and edited by Daniel Court 2021

All Photographs copyright: Hilla Kurki

Searching for the Shapes Within

We would like to give you the opportunity to experience our current group exhibition with a curated online viewing by Timothy Persons: Searching for the Shapes Within presents works by Grey Crawford | KwieKulik | Teresa Murak | Riitta Päiväläinen | Finnbogi Pétursson | Ragna Róbertsdóttir | Anna Rún Tryggvadóttir | Ryszard Wasko recounting the collective approach in how the artists use our natural landscape as the raw material for their frames of thinking. These works represent personal stages without borders, where there is no other audience but the future.

Artist Interview: Mikko Rikala

Interview with Mikko Rikala on the occasion of his second solo exhibition "Paradigms of Chance". The show was on display at Persons Projects from 21 November 2020 - 27 February 2021.

Mikko Rikala is an artist who uses the photographic process as tool for gathering and recording material to help him in his philosophical pursuit of finding different ways to explore what’s behind the rational self. Rikala states, "I’m trying to uncover the relationship between what is seen as rational on one hand and what is perceived as irrational on the other.” His work is a reflection that merges mystical and philosophical thoughts through the empirical process of observation.

Filmed in Helsinki by Daniel Court 2021
Photographic copyright: Mikko Rikala 2021
Exhibition photographs copyright: Emese Kiss

Music Copyright: Daniel Birch

Artist Interview: Eeva Karhu

Interview with Eeva Karhu on the occasion of her solo exhibition "Shadows Within" at Persons Projects. The show was part of the European Month of Photography Berlin, and open from 11 September - 14 November 2020.

Eeva Karhu is one of the new generation of artists emerging from the Helsinki School who use nature and its seasonal passing as their personal barometer to measure and translate our world by the power of its presence in our daily lives.

She uses photographic process of layering one image upon another as her method for collecting the passage of time. This is most evident in her ongoing Path series, where she photographs the same walking route she takes from her home. After her walk, she compiles all the photographs together into one image to form the given moment they were taken in. Karhu continues this process throughout the year, creating her own visual calendar of time periods based on the harvesting of light from one moment to the next.

Film and Music: Jouko Aroheinä

Edit: Eeva Karhu

Photographs copyright: Eeva Karhu

Exhibition photographs copyright: Emese Kiss

Artist Interview: Santeri Tuori

Interview with Santeri Tuori on the occasion of his solo exhibition "Time Is No Longer Round" at Persons Projects. The show is part of the European Month of Photography Berlin, and open from 11 September - 14 November 2020.

Santeri Tuori uses a camera to engage with the properties of nature and its power of change over the past two decades. Forests, skies, lilies, and wind are only some of the basic elements you might find in any Nordic landscape, and all become items of Tuori’s interest and observation. How should we value these essential features that make up the northern scenery is the fundamental question that lies behind Tuori’s work and his fascination with the passage of time.

⁠Filmed and edited by Daniel Court

Photographs copyright: Santeri Tuori

Arno Rafael Minkkinen in conversation with Timothy Persons

Sanna Kannisto Working at Hanko

In 2017, on the occasion of an exhibition at Ateneum Art Museum Helsinki, Sanna Kannisto reflected upon her artistic work. Filmed at Hanko Bird Station, Finnland, this short documentation gives an exclusive view behind the scenes and into Kannisto's working methods which derive from the traditions of scientific research, seeking a balance between the objective and aesthetic aspects.

Format: 4K video, 16:9
Duration: 6:47 min
Directing: Robert Ruutsalo Filming
Editing: Robert Ruutsalo & Joonas Schwartzberg
Music: Bensound
Production: Studiovarustamo Helsinki