Kirjeitä Argentiinasta / Letters from Argentina
2023
The artwork contains letters that I have written in 2023 and sent from San Miguel de Tucumán, North Argentina to the Museum of Helinä Rautavaara, Espoo, Finland. In the letters, I contemplate my relationship with the Finnish national identity and how it changes when living abroad. Chance and uncertainty have played a part in the artwork since the letters have been sent individually by the post office; some have not reached their destination. Writing the letters has been an introspective journey where thoughts and observations have gone forward and become clearer or changed.
The act of writing by hand, making a letter and walking to the post office, queueing, repeating the same task over and over again, and having the same conversation with the same people at the post office, has become an invisible but essential part of the artwork that makes a reference to the old traveler’s or immigrant’s traditions.
The material of the letters varies from the vegetable store’s newspapers for wrapping eggs, empty maté paper bags to the attachement letter of the Argentinian ID card and the art university’s leftover paper that is sold with the price of a beer bottle at the streets of the neighborhood.
