August 2024 – The Lapinlahden Lähde community center in Helsinki welcomed a novel project this summer: the Lapinlahti Film Festival, featuring screenings and community activities celebrating the importance of mental health. I was delighted to receive an invitation from festival director Anton Baer to contribute to this initiative as curator of an art exhibition. My natural choice was a selection of photographs from Liquid Darkness, a photography and research project that Finnish photographer Oona Oikkonen undertook during six months between the years 2022 and 2023.
Oikkonen’s own questioning, what drives people to danger on the edge of volcanoes?, took her to explore a total of eight volcanoes. In her determination to face her own fear when standing in front of a volcano, her field trips also brought her to look at these mysterious lava beings as purveyors of new forms of life, such as the birth of more resilience species of flora and fauna. Without ever dismissing the destructive power of volcanoes, however, Oikkonen also brings it under a different light through her photographs in the ongoing series, The Aftermath. Imbued in strong hues that range from red, orange and yellow, the images present her vision of a future in which destruction would be the everyday norm. In the age of a world whose climate is deteriorating exponentially, Oikkonen makes a bold statement that moves us to stop taking for granted our present while dismissing our responsibility for action.
I was delighted to work with Oona Oikkonen in the making of the exhibition Liquid Darkness. We were granted the bright and intimate Pellavahuone (the Linen Room) inside Venetsia-talo (the Venice House) as the space to display eight of her photographic works as well as series of polaroids, postcards, volcanic rocks, and other travel objects that testify to both her traveled journey and her wish to continue venturing into more volcanic lands. For this occasion, I wrote A Sentiment of Destruction as an exhibition review and made printed copies available for visitors. My role as curator was complemented by a talk I gave at the festival’s auditorium on August 24th (it was preceded by the screening of the film Fire of Love (2022) by Sara Dosa) and a series of guided visits spread throughout the during of the event. The first edition of Lapinlahti Film Festival ran from August 22 to August 25, 2024. I could not feel more enthused for the arrival of its second edition next year.
