What remains? (2025–)

What remains? Images, words and the poetics of erasure

This body of work was presented at the National Library of Finland in August—September 2025. The text-based works are currently in Finnish only, as is my thesis on erasure poetry, completed at the University of the Arts Helsinki in 2025. [Thesis (in Finnish)]

In this exhibition, I focus on erasure as a poetic strategy, a visual gesture, and a way of engaging with memory, history, and archives. All the works are created using a method I developed: I digitally remove images and text from the pages of old books, leaving only selected fragments in their original places. The new work emerges from what remains visible. Most of the works are Finnish-language pieces combining text and image, based on my long-term work with archival materials and outdated knowledge. I work with old non-fiction books, including the three-volume anthropological work Woman. An Historical Gynæcological and Anthropological Compendium from the early 20th century, which I have previously used in my photo series Untitled Women.

My practice is strongly connected to the feminist tradition of rewriting. I often think of it as diving: searching for lost stories at the bottom of the sea and bringing them to light. Erasing is not only an aesthetic gesture, but also a way to influence language, collective memory, and social discourse. I invite viewers to ask: what remains? Whose voice is heard? How is history remembered—or forgotten? By taking old, often racist and sexist non-fiction books apart and assembling something beautiful and personal from the fragments, I build my own visual poetics. Erasing historical text and images can be seen as a form of censorship on one hand, and as remembering and forgetting on the other—reflecting how the past is spoken about in the new era.

My works operate on both visual and linguistic levels. This exhibition opens perspectives on erasure poetry, a methodical writing style in which parts of an existing text are removed or covered, creating a new work from what remains.