Sharing Imaginations art collection

Wilma Hurskainen: Meditations series, summer 2013 
The photographs in the Meditations series examine the relationship between the subject and the background. Hurskainen's images ponder whether we want to blend in with our environment or create contrast with it. If the subject blends into the background, does it mimic the surrounding reality like a chameleon, or does the environment overwhelm the subject? Where does the boundary lie? The initial inspiration for the series of photographs came from Hurskainen's somatic experiences achieved during meditation practice, a certain kind of dissolution of personal boundaries. She set out to achieve a similar experience through photography. At the same time, the artist wanted to encourage herself to pause and calm down, allowing the possibility of connecting with the surrounding world through the senses.

Noora Sandgren: Dialogue 13.11.2015
Four works by Noora Sandgren will be on display at Marsio. The three works in the Dialogue series are camera-less. They, as well as the work Eye-Body (Red Black) are part of Sandgren’s long-running body of works, Fluid Being, an artistic exploration of site-specificity that has been ongoing since 2014. One of the starting points for the camera-less works was Sandgren’s discovery of her father’s outdated photographic papers. They proved to be a unique, even unpredictable partner to work with. In her home garden by Lake Hiidenvesi, the artist rested her weight on photographic papers and let the sunlight draw a picture on them. Sweating or the touch of the lips or tears left their marks on the work, just like the insects that walked on the papers. The resulting image is an image of presence, and the works are poetic in nature. They invite the viewer to imagine the process and life of the image.

Jari Silomäki: My Life with My Mother-in-Law 
Silomäki has captured the emotions, atmosphere, and stories from Internet forums in the 2010s for his series "Geography of Emotions – Character and Personality in a Digital Environment." Silomäki delved deep into various international forums and spent hundreds of hours reading the writings of anonymous individuals. The photographer scripted scenes based on the texts written by pseudonymous individuals on the internet and set up the scenes in his studio. The images depict actors interpreting the scenes. The text on the surface of the artwork depicts a scene from the life of the person behind the pseudonym, written in the author's own native language.

Maija Tammi: Bathing Brains 
Tammi's Bathing Brains installation consists of an essay and three UV-printed photographs on glass. The images can be viewed as brains floating—or bathing—in the midst of emptiness. This is a playful reference to the Boltzmann brain theory. The installation also prompts reflection on where thinking happens and how it occurs. The piece serves as a reminder of how much—yet at the same time, how little—we know about the brain even today. The images feature human brain organoids grown in a research laboratory. These self-directed, three-dimensional tissues resemble human brains and were made possible through stem cell research. The 8–12 week-old brain organoids in the images were grown for research purposes at the Helsinki Institute of Life Science (HiLIFE) at the University of Helsinki. Tammi worked with Takashi Nambo’s research group.

Saana Wang: Hujialou 
Hujialou is a series of 32 photographs by Wang that explores change. Hujialou is also a district in eastern Beijing, where a young Wang arrived for the first time in 1991 with her parents. The capital city, which was once traversed by dirt roads, has since experienced tremendous change. In addition to changes in urban structure and infrastructure, changes have shaken all of China's cultural layers. In the photographs of the "Hujialou" series, Wang expresses many different levels of change, intertwining China's change with her own personal life. The photographs highlight innocent encounters. In Wang's works, gaze and encounter are timeless elements. The images ask, whom are the subjects looking at? The photographer? The viewer? Whom?

Sheung Yiu: Face landmark
A native of Hong Kong, Yiu is interested in the increasing complexity and agency of computational photography in contemporary digital culture. Yiu’s works include photographs, videos, photographic objects, exhibition installations and books. In Yiu’s The Poetics of Science series, the Helsinki-based researcher and visual artist explores the visual culture surrounding scientific photographic material. In the early days, photographs were convincing scientific evidence of natural phenomena. Now they have become more artificial, descriptive and abstract. The Poetics of Science project reveals the tension between photographic meaning and visual representation, using scientific photographic material as a starting point – what is meant to be communicated, what is communicated and what is understood.