Eeva-Liisa Puhakka

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I am at the moment interested in space versus place and different aspects of memory (collective memory, memory as a image, bodily memory, place’s memory etc). I have photographed and filmed abandoned places and houses over several years. In abandoned places one is able to feel timelessness of a world beyond boredom, no past, no future nor present either. It seems like nothing could ever happen there, only degeneration and wheathering. Places are in state in which nothing happens but in a same time all things are possible. Abandoned houses work as a muse for the imagination, creating many opportunities for lost memories or deliberately forgotten memories.

On a practical level, my art practice centers around my interest of the overlooked significance of ordinary artefacts, old things and stories, forgotten things and places, which I use as basic materials in works that range from video installations to paintings. On a theoretical level, I have been focusing on what is a place, what is a memory and is there then a memory of place. An interesting relationship is also between remembering and forgetting. Do we have to be able to forget to remember? Is it necessity to forget as a condition for the possibility to remember, and whether there can be something like happy forgetting in parallel to happy memory. Can we celebrate the lost and forgotten things?

I wanted the viewers of my installations to forget their real environment and feel that they are in the midst of what is happening and dissolving between fiction of what they see and sense, and the reality of a physical room. The audience’s own experiences and memories have an impact how they perceive the installation.

Eeva-Liisa is a visual artist from Finland. She is educated from Helsinki University of Technology and Valand School of Fine Arts, University of Gothenburg. She is currently based in Berlin. She works with video, photography, installation and new media.

Exhibitions
2011
“What happens when nothing happens” installation. Solo exhibition. 00130Gallery Project Room. Helsinki.
2010
“The best party is always in the kitchen on” environmetal art, LARU10, Helsinki.
“Houses” Wasteland festival, art festival in Kouvola. Installation and video-sound performance.
“Udders” environmental art. Ars Sippola, Kouvola.
2009
“Early One Sunday Morning Everything Outside” mixed media installation, “Variables of Attraction”, Masters degree show, gallery Rotor 1, Valand, Gothenburg.
2008
“Milk machine” installation, “Animal therefore I am” group show, gallery Rotor 2, Gothenburg.
” Välillä” group show (Lautta-artist group), photographs, gallery Ruutikellari, Hamina.
“I see tree in this world” mixed media installation, “Reinventing the Television” group show, Rotor 2, Gothenburg.
“Luontaisenkaltaisia” group show, mixed media installation and photographs, Gallery Maa-tila, Helsinki.
2007
“Trälen” video, C:art:media winter exhibition, Rotor 1, Gothenburg.
“Gray becomes green ” Video installation,”Dislocate – extracting meanings from individual sites and translating them into works of sound, image, installation and text” group show, gallery Konstepidemi, Gothenburg.
“Maasta maalle” Bachelor degree show, video and paintings, Kaapelitehdas, Helsinki.
2006
“Night at Viaborg” group show, b&w-photographs, Viaborg library, Helsinki.
“Seksiä ja muuta sisustustaidetta” Art School Maa spring exhibition, photographs and paintings, Nifca, Helsinki.

Public art project
Paintings of disabled children transferred to the wall of public building (Makkaratalo). A member of the working group. ## 2005
“Suhteita” solo exhibition, paintings. Gallery Viileä Punainen, Helsinki.
“Viisi aistia” Taidekoulu Maa, group exhibition, paintings, Nifca, Helsinki.
“Pullopostia Suomenlinnasta”group exhibition, black and white photographs, Kontupiste. Helsinki.
“Havaintoja 1” group exhibition, paintings. S-gallery. Helsinki.

Performances
As a member of a performance group “Kuu-Maa”. ## 2007
“Story about violence” Women’s Day Festival, Amnesty Finland. Old student house. Helsinki.
2006
A short-film about performance group “Kuu-Maa”. Producer Gustavo Consuegra.
Open House. Art School Maa. Helsinki.
Kallio kukkii-festival. Gallery Majakka. Helsinki.
International performance festival, Cable factory. Helsinki.
2005
La-bas. Gallery Lasipalatsi. Helsinki.
Open House. Art School Maa. Helsinki.
Koe!-festival. Gallery Majakka. Helsinki.
Faces-festival. Billnäs.
Factory club. Helsinki.

http://www.eeva-liisa.net/