Projects 2001

Coming to Terms with the Past

The Role Of Memory and History in Visual Culture


Coming to Terms with the Past – The Role of Memory and History in Visual Culture is a project consisting of two workshops and an exhibition. The aim of the project is to analyse and reflect the role of the memory and history in contemporary visual culture, especially looking at how different societies have dealt with the past.

The participants of the project are Nordic Council of Ministers, NIFCA, Edsvik Konst och Kultur in Sweden, M.E.C.C.A in Terezin and five Nordic Fine Arts Academies (Helsinki, Valand, Trondheim, Reykjavik and Copenhagen).

The first workshop will take place in Suomenlinna, Helsinki from 10th to 13th of May 2001 and the second workshop in Terezin, Czech Republic in August 2001. The third part of the project is a group exhibition with the participating students, teachers and possibly other artists, to be held at the Edsvik Konsthall, Sweden in November-December 2001.

Working title: Memory-project

A joint exhibition by five Nordic art academies

Location: Rantakasarmi, Suomenlinna
Time: 8 December 2001 - 13 January 2002

Opening Saturday 8 December at 14.00
Press opening Saturday 8 December at 12.00

The exhibition project is done in collaboration with the Nordic Council of Ministers and NIFCA - Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art. The participants are from the Art Academies of Helsinki, Gothenburg, Trondheim, Copenhagen and Reykjavik - one professor and four students from each. A catalogue will be later produced and the show will tour in other Nordic countries.

The project focuses on the importance and role of memory and history. The idea is to analyse, with the means of contemporary visual art and culture, the different strategies how to confront the past and what kind of relationship one has towards it. It is about memory and the past, which is always present, both on individual and collective levels. Mika Hannula, director of Helsinki Academy of Fine Airs, and artist Anders Krüger from Stockholm, Sweden, have organized the exhibition.

The project consists of three parts - concluding with the exhibition. It has been preceded by two workshops on the thematic of memory and history in which everyone participated. The first one was held in Suomenlinna May 2001 and the second in Theresienstadt (nowadays Terezin), close to Prague in August 2001. In both workshops the task was to study both via the general historical examples as well as particular works of art with the relationship between the past and the present within the field of contemporary art. The result is a joint exhibition, which starts off from a clear theme and which hopefully reflects - in its plurality of paintings, video projects and sound installations - personal experiences and versions of the relationship to memory and the past.

For further information, please contact: Mika Hannula, director of the Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts