Vieraalla maalla (In a Foreing Place)

The on-going 'Vieraalla maalla (In a Foreign Place)' project is induced by experiences of cultural misunderstandings that affect the way we perceive images and the world we live in. In this fabricated outlandish world, traditional Finnish, Carelian and Sami customs and practices have been given a slightly odd twist. Not deviating beyond recognisability for recipients with the relevant cultural knowledge, the scenes toy with proverbs and obsolete customs, rendering the images absurdly strange to a viewer unfamiliar with the cultural heritage. Drawing from personal experiences of cultural alienation and misunderstandings — and my Carelian origin — the work invites the recipients to strive to decipher and locate the depicted world, thereby denoting the arbitrary nature of our interpretations so easily taken for granted. These images also take a critical look at the long-running strand of othering and exoticising representations of unfamiliar cultures and markers of identity that photography has perpetuated over the years, and regrettably still often does.