MUU Galleria - Laura Horelli: JOKINEN, 26.2.-3.4.2016

― MUUgalleria

Laura Horelli: Jokinen, an exhibition in MUU Gallery 26.2-3.4.2016. The exhibition tells the migration tale of the Finnish communist August Jokinen. Born in Tampere in 1894, Jokinen moved to the United States in 1916. He became known from a show trial against racism organized by the American Communist Party in Harlem, New York, in 1931. In ‘The Yokinen Trial’ the Finnish Worker’s Club janitor was accused of not defending three African-American communists who had been mistreated at the club’s dance. Jokinen admitted having made a mistake and promised to fight for black rights. Many newspapers including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New York Herald Tribune reported on the proceeding. Possibly because of the media attention, USA immigration authorities arrested Jokinen soon after; this time he was accused of membership in the Communist Party. Jokinen’s ‘real’ trial proceeded to the lower and Supreme Courts, before he lost the case and was deported to Finland. He however decided to go to Petrozavodsk in Soviet Karelia at a time when great numbers of Finnish-Americans migrated to the Soviet Union. Moving somewhere between historical research, a detective story and an arts and crafts club, the works in the exhibition – a digital film, a book sculpture, an image series and a text piece – are based on documentary research carried out in New York, Helsinki and Petrozavodsk. Formally and narratively they are unconventional, however. They aim to raise questions rather than inform objectively. The artist has in her earlier works addressed memory and the representation of the past through autobiographical subject matter. This exhibition is about events that took place 85 years ago, of which most likely no direct memory any longer exists. The historical traces left by an ordinary person are examined through public information: newspaper articles, propaganda and security police files from different countries. By exposing a story from the 1930s, the artist asks whether there are any similarities in the present and the past? The Arts Promotion Centre Finland, AVEK - The Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture and Kone Foundation have supported the exhibition. muugalleria@muu.fi, www.muu.fi

Keräyksessä Mediataiteen verkkosivuja 2016 = Mediataide

Alkuperäislähde: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJrF6zDfJlU

Sivun kuvailutiedot ovat peräisin alkuperäislähteestä (YouTube).